w intervened, and it was abruptly
checked. The people who were driving could observe each other from a long
distance, and might naturally think that they should pass directly,
instead of which they did not seem to get much nearer. Some miles away,
where the same road crossed the Downs, it looked from afar like a white
line drawn perpendicularly up the hill.

The road itself was narrow, hardly wider than a lane, but on either side
was a broad strip of turf, each strip quite twice the width of the
metalled portion. On the verge of the dust the red pimpernel opened its
flowers to the bright blue cloudless sky, and the lowly convolvulus grew
thickly among the tall dusty bennets. Sweet short clover flowers stood but
a little way back; still nearer the hedges the grass was coarser, long,
and wire-like. Tall thistles stood beside the water furrows and beside the
ditch, and round the hawthorn bushes that grew at intervals on the sward
isolated from the hedge. Loose flints of great size lay here and there
among the grass, perhaps rolled aside surreptitiously by the
stone-breakers to save themselves trouble. Everything hot and dusty. The
clover dusty, the convolvulus dusty, the brambles and hawthorn, the small
scattered elms all dusty, all longing for a shower or for a cool breeze.

The reapers were at work in the wheat, but the plain was so level that it
was not possible to see them without mounting upon a flint heap. Then
their heads were just visible as they stood upright, but when they stooped
to use the hook they disappeared. Yonder, however, a solitary man in his
shirt-sleeves perched up above the corn went round and round the field,
and beside him strange awkward arms seemed to beat down the wheat. He was
driving a reaping machine, to which the windmill-like arms belonged.
Beside the road a shepherd lingered, leaning on a gate, while his flock,
which he was driving just as fast and no faster than they cared to eat
their way along the sward, fed part on one side and part on the other. Now
and then two or three sheep crossed over with the tinkling of a bell. In
the silence and stillness and brooding heat, the larks came and dusted
themselves in the white impalpable powder of the road. Farther away the
partridges stole quietly to an anthill at the edge of some barley. By the
white road, a white milestone, chipped and defaced, stood almost hidden
among thistles and brambles. Some white railings guarded the sides of a
bridge, o