him. He decided not to leave the road
until he was free from observation. The man was a stranger, an almost
conventional gamekeeper, and he endorsed Mr. Brumley's remark upon the
charmingness of the day with guarded want of enthusiasm. Mr. Brumley
went on for some few minutes, then halted, assured himself that the
stranger was well out of sight and returned at once towards the point
where high-roads were to be left and adventure begun. But he was still
some yards away when he became aware of that velveteen-coated figure
approaching again. "Damn!" said Mr. Brumley and slacked his eager paces.
This time he expressed a view that the weather was extremely mild.
"Very," said the man in velveteen with a certain lack of respect in his
manner.

It was no good turning back again. Mr. Brumley went on slowly, affected
to botanize, watched the man out of sight and immediately made a dash
for the pine-woods, taking the barbed wire in a manner extremely
detrimental to his left trouser leg. He made his way obliquely up
through the trees to the crest from which he had so often surveyed the
shining ponds of Aleham. There he paused to peer back for that
gamekeeper--whom he supposed in spite of reason to be stalking him--to
recover his breath and to consider his further plans. The sunset was
very fine that night, a great red sun was sinking towards acutely
outlined hill-crests, the lower nearer distances were veiled in lavender
mists and three of the ponds shone like the fragments of a shattered
pink topaz. But Mr. Brumley had no eye for landscape....

About two hours after nightfall Mr. Brumley reached the railway station.
His trousers and the elbow of his coat bore witness to a second transit
of the barbed-wire fence in the darkness, he had manifestly walked into
a boggy place and had some difficulty in recovering firm ground and he
had also been sliding in a recumbent position down a bank of moist
ferruginous sand. Moreover he had cut the palm of his left hand. There
was a new strange stationmaster who regarded him without that respect to
which he had grown accustomed. He received the information that the
winter train service had been altered and that he would have to wait
forty-five minutes for the next train to London with the resignation of
a man already chastened by misfortune and fatigue. He went into the
waiting-room and after a vain search for the poker--the new
stationmaster evidently kept it in a different place--sat down in