Up the steep side of the “Tump” at last, slackening speed perforce, and checking the grey on the summit. It was a great round hill, detached, and somewhat like a huge bowl inverted, with a small circular level space, on what at a distance seemed an almost pointed apex, a space bare of aught but close-cropped herbage. Westwards was the dim vale, a faint mist blotting out steeple and tower—a mist blending with the sky at the horizon, and there all aglow. Eastwards, ridge upon ridge, hill after hill, with spurs running out into the narrow plains between, and deep coombes. He gazed earnestly over these, looking for signs and landmarks, but found none. The rough trail was lost—the hoof marks cut in the winter when the earth was soft were filled up by the swelling turf, and covered over with thyme. Those who laboured by day in the plains, weeding the fields, were gone down to their homes in the hamlets hidden in the valleys. At a venture he struck direct for the east, anxious to lose no time; for he began to fear he should miss Margaret, and soon afterwards luckily crossed the path of a shepherd-lad, whistling as he and his shaggy dog wended for “whoam.”
“Which is the way to Mr. Fisher’s?” asked Geoffrey.
“Thaay be goin’ into th’ Mash tomorrow,” answered the boy, whose thoughts were differently engaged.
“Tell me the way to Mr. Fisher’s—the Warren.”
“We be got shart o’ keep; wants zum rain, doan’t ’ee zee?”
“Can’t you answer a question?”
“Thur’s a main sight o’ tackle in the Mash vor um.”
He was so used to being stopped and asked about his sheep that he took it for granted Geoffrey was putting the same accustomed interrogatories. Every farmer cross-examines his neighbour’s shepherd when he meets him. The “Mash” was doubtless a meadow reclaimed from a marsh. “Land be terrable dry, zur.”
“Will you listen to me?” angrily. “Where’s the Warren?”
“Aw, mebbe you means ould Fisher’s?”
“I mean Mr. Fisher’s.”
“A’ be auver thur,” pointing northeast.
“How far?”
“Aw, it be a akkerd road,” doubtfully, as he looked Geoffrey up and down, and it dawned on him slowly that it was a stranger.
“I’ll give you a quart if you will show me.”
“Wull ee? Come on.” The beer went at once right to the nervous centre and awoke all his faculties. He led Geoffrey across the plain and up a swelling shoulder of down, on whose ridge was a broad deep fosse and green rampart.
“This be th’ Cas’l,” said the guide, meaning entrenchments—earthworks are called “castles.” In one spot the fosse was partly filled up, and an opening cut in the rampart, by which he rode through and found the “castle,” a vast earthwork of unknown antiquity.
“Mind thaay vlint-pits,” said the boy.
The flint-diggers had been at work here long ago—deep gullies and holes encumbered the way, half-hidden with thistles and furze. The place was honeycombed; it reminded Geoffrey of the Australian gold-diggings. He threaded his way slowly between these, and presently emerged on the slope beyond the “castle.”
“Now which way is it?” he asked, glancing doubtfully at the hills still rolling away in unbroken succession.
“Yellucks,” said the boy, meaning “Look here,” and he pointed at a dark object on a distant ridge, which Geoffrey made out to be a copse. “Thur’s Moonlight Virs.”
“Well, and when I get to Moonlight Firs, which way then?”
“Thee foller th’ ruts—thaay’ll take ee to Akkern Chace.”
“The ruts?”
“Eez, th’ wagon ruts; thaay goes drough Akkern Chace down to Warren. Be you afeared?” seeing Geoffrey hesitated. “Thaay’ll lead ee drough th’ wood; it be main dark under th’ pollard oaks:
Akkern Chace
Be a unkid place,
When th’ moon do show hur face.
Wur be my quart?”
Geoffrey gave him sixpence; he touched his forelock, called his dog, and whistled down the hill. Geoffrey pushed on as rapidly as his horse, now a little weary, would go for the firs. In half an hour he reached it, and found a wagon track which, as the boy had said, after a while led him into a wood—scattered pollard oaks, hawthorn bushes, and fir plantations. Now two fresh difficulties arose: the grey first limped and then went lame; and the question began to arise, Would Margaret after all come this way? In the gathering twilight, might she not take the circuitous, but safer, highway? She might even have already passed. By this time he was well into the wood—it consisted of firs there. The grey went so lame he resolved to go no farther, but to wait. He dismounted, threw himself at length upon the grass beside the green track, and the grey immediately applied himself to grazing with steady contentment.
The tall green trees shut out all but a narrow lane of sky, azure, but darkening; not the faintest breath of moving air relieved the sultry brooding heat of the summer twilight. From the firs came a fragrance, filling the atmosphere with a sweet resinous odour. The sap exuding through the bark formed in white viscous drops upon the trunks. Indolently reclining, half drowsy in the heat, he could see deep into the wood, along on the level ground between the stems, for the fallen “needles” checked vegetation. A squirrel gambolled hither and thither in this hollow space; with darting rapid movements it came towards
