as it
had done when the Normans crossed their not far distant Channel,
or rattling over hilltops through leather-coated oak groves which
had kept their symmetry since their progenitors were planted by
the Druids. Here was nothing to cramp the mind: here was the
England that has absorbed Celt, Saxon, Fleming, Norman,
generation after generation, each with its passing form of
political faith: the England of traditional eld, the beloved
country.

In the meanwhile Lawrence had to find Chilmark. He had neither
map nor compass and was unfamiliar with the lie of the land, but,
mindful of the station master's directions to go south and turn
twice to the left, he shaped a course south-east and looked for a
shepherd to ask his way of. At present there were no shepherds
to be seen and no houses; here and there a trail of smoke marked
some hidden hamlet, sunk deep in cup or cranny, but which was
Chilmark he could not tell. Down went the track, plunging
towards a stream that brawled in a wild bottom: up over a rough
hillside ruby-red with willowherb: then down again to a pool
shaded by two willows and a silver birch, and lying so cool and
solitary in its own cloven nook, bounded in every direction by
half a furlong of chalky hillside, that Lawrence was seized with
a desire to strip and bathe, and sun himself dry on the brilliant
mossy lawn at its brink. But out of regard for the Wanhope lunch
hour he walked on, following a trickle of water between reeds and
knotgrafis, till in the next winding of the glen he came on a
house: only a labourer's cot, two rooms below and one above, but
inhabited, for smoke was coming out of the chimney. Lawrence
turned up a worn thread of path and knocked with his stick at the
open door.

It was answered by a tall young girl with a dirty face, wearing a
serge skirt pinned up under a dirty apron. The house was dirty
too: the smell of an unwashed, unswept interior came out of it,
together with the wailing of a fretful baby. "I've missed my
way on the moor," said Lawrence, inobtrusively holding his
handkerchief to his nose. "Can you direct me to Chilmark?"

"Do you mean Chilmark or Castle Wharton? Oh Dorrie, don't cry!"
She lifted the babe on her arm and stood gazing at Lawrence in a
leisured and friendly manner, as if she wondered who he were. "It
isn't far, but it's a long rambling village and there are any
number of paths down. And if you want the Bendishes--" Evidently
she thought he