d and
started on. Taking at random one of the three lanes that debouched from
the bottom of the green, I meandered on between high banks, happy in the
consciousness of not knowing at all where it would lead me--that
essential of a country ramble. Except one cottage in a bottom and one
farm on a rise, I passed nothing, nobody. The spring was late in these
parts, the buds had hardly formed as yet on any trees, and now and then
between the bursts of sunlight a few fine specks of snow would come
drifting past me on the wind. Close to a group of pines at a high
corner, the lane dipped sharply down to a long farm-house standing back
in its yard, where three carts were drawn up, and an empty waggonette
with its shafts in the air. And suddenly, by some broken daffodils on
the seats and confetti on the ground, I perceived that I had stumbled on
the bride's home, where the wedding feast was, no doubt, in progress.

Gratifying but by no means satisfying my curiosity by gazing at the
lichened stone and thatch of the old house, at the pigeons, pigs, and
hens at large between it and the barns, I passed on down the lane, which
turned up steeply to the right beside a little stream. To my left was a
long larch wood, to my right rough fields with many trees. The lane
finished at a gate below the steep moorside crowned by a rocky tor. I
stood there leaning on the top bar, debating whether I should ascend or
no. The bracken had, most of it, been cut in the autumn, and not a
hundred yards away the furze was being swaled; the little blood-red
flames and the blue smoke, the yellow blossoms of the gorse, the
sunlight, and some flecks of drifting snow were mingled in an amazing
tangle of colour.

I had made up my mind to ascend the tor, and was pushing through the
gate, when suddenly I saw a woman sitting on a stone under the wall
bordering the larch wood. She was holding her head in her hands, rocking
her body to and fro; and her eyes were evidently shut, for she had not
noticed me. She wore a blue serge dress; her hat reposed beside her, and
her dark hair was straggling about her face. That face, all blowsy and
flushed, was at once wild and stupefied. A face which has been
beautiful, coarsened and swollen by life and strong emotion, is a
pitiful enough sight. Her dress, hat, and the way her hair had been done
were redolent of the town, and of that unnameable something which clings
to women whose business it is to attract men. And yet there w