h, had we dropped from the skies or been escaping from the
grey prison not far distant, the tenants of the brake could hardly have
been less merciful in their scrutiny or comments.

After the clean wind of the moor, the taint of the last meal and
over-clad fellow-beings seemed to cling unpleasantly to the
low-ceilinged room whither we fled, and I do not think we breathed
comfortably again till we had paid our bill and returned to the
sunlight. Before leaving we inquired the time, and learned it was
nearly four o'clock.

One ought to "know the time," it seems, among men's haunts; but, once
out of sight of these, it suffices, surely, to eat when hungry, sleep
when tired, roam as long as daylight and legs will let one--in fine, to
share with the shaggy ponies and browsing sheep a lofty disregard for
all artificial divisions of the earth's journey through space. And our
joint watch happened at the time to be undergoing repairs in Plymouth.

To follow the ramifications of a road gives one no lasting impression
of the surrounding country, but directly a wanderer has to depend on
landmarks as a guide, all his powers of observation quicken. One
ragged hill-top guided us to another, across valleys scored with the
workings of forgotten tin-mines. A brook, crooning its queer,
independent moor-song between banks of peat, rambled beside us for some
time. Then, as if wearying of our company, it turned abruptly and was
lost to view; in the summer stillness of late afternoon we heard it
babbling on long after our ways separated.

If the truth be known, I suspect it deemed us dullish dogs. But we
were tiring--not with the jaded weariness begotten of hard roads, when
the spine aches and knees stiffen; no, a comfortable lassitude was
slackening our joints and bringing thoughts of warm baths and supper.
However, our shadows, valiant fellows, swung along before us across the
rusty bracken with a cheerful constancy, and, encouraged by their
ever-lengthening strides and by the solitude, we even found heart to
lift our voices in song. Now and again small birds fled upwards with
shrill twitters at our approach, and settled again to resume their
interrupted suppers; but after a while they left for their roosts in
the rowans and sycamores to the south, and rabbits began to show
themselves in the open spaces among the furze. As if reluctantly, the
perfect day drew to its close.

We raced up the flank of a long ridge to keep the settin