'll be a car
waiting from Wanhope, Gaston--"

"Zere no car 'ere, M'sieu--ze man say."

"What, no one to meet me?" Evidently no one: there were not half
a dozen people on the flower-bordered platform, and those few
were country folk with bundles and bags. Lawrence strolled out
into the yard, hoping that his servant's incorrigibly lame
English might have led to a misunderstanding. But there was no
vehicle of any kind, and the station master could not recommend a
cab. Countisford was a small village, smaller even than
Chilmark, and owed the distinction of the railway solely to its
being in the flat country under the Plain. "But you don't mean
to say," said Lawrence incredulous, "that I shall have to walk?"

But it seemed there was no help for it, unless he preferred to
sit in the station while a small boy on a bicycle was despatched
to Chilmark for the fly from the Prince of Wales's Feathers; and
in the end Lawrence went afoot, though his expression when faced
with four miles of dusty road would have moved pity in any heart
but that of his little valet. Hyde was one of those men who
change their habits when they change their clothes. He did not
care what happened to him when he was out of England, following
the Alaskan trail in eighty degrees of frost, or thrashing round
the Horn in a tramp steamer, but when he shaved off his beard,
and put on silk underclothing and the tweeds of Sackville Street,
he grew as lazy as any flaneur of the pavement. Gaston however
was not sympathetic. He was always glad when anything unpleasant
happened to his master.

Leaving Gaston to sit on the luggage, Lawrence swung off with his
long even stride, flicking with his stick at the bachelor's
buttons in the hedge. He could not miss his way, said the
station master: straight down the main road for a couple of
miles, then the first turning on the left and the first on the
left again. Some half a mile out of Countisford however Lawrence
came on a signpost and with the traveller's instinct stopped to
read it:

WINCANTON 8 M.
CASTLE WHARTON 3 1/2 M.
CHILMARK 3 M.

So ran the clear lettering on the southern arm. Eastwards a much
more weatherbeaten arm, pointing crookedly up a stony cart track,
said in dim brown characters: "CHILMARK 2 M." Plainly a short cut
over the moor! Better stones underfoot than padded dust: and
Lawrence struck uphill swiftly, gla