led on.

Out of the priestless sanctuary, up over the crest of the rise, into the
kiss of the sunlight we sailed, and so on to a blue-brown moor, all
splashed and dappled with the brilliant yellow of the gorse in bloom and
rolling away into the hazy distance like an untroubled sea. So for a
mile it flowed, a lazy pomp of purple, gold-flecked and glowing. Then
came soft cliffs of swelling woodland, rising to stay its course with
gentle dignity--walls that uplifted eyes found but the dwindled edge of
a far mightier flood that stretched and tossed, a leafy waste of
billows, flaunting more living shades of green than painters dream of,
laced here and there with gold and, once in a long while, shot with
crimson, rising and falling with Atlantic grandeur, till the eye
faltered, and the proud rich waves seemed to be breaking on the rosy
sky.

And over all the sun lay dying, his crimson ebb of life staining the
firmament with splendour, his mighty heart turning the dance of Death to
a triumphant progress, where Blood and Flame rode by with clouds for
chargers, and Earth and Sky themselves shouldered the litter of their
passing King.

An exclamation of wonder broke from Adele, and Jill cried to me to stop.

"Just for a minute, Boy, so that she can see it properly."

Obediently I slowed to a standstill. Then I backed the great car and
swung up a side track for the length of a cricket-pitch. The few cubits
thus added to our stature extended the prospect appreciably. Besides, it
was now unnecessary to crane the neck.

At last--

"If you're waiting for me to say 'Go,'" said Adele, "I shouldn't. I'm
quite ready to sit here till nightfall. It's up to you to tear me away."

I looked at Jill.

"Better be getting on," I said. "The others'll be wondering where we
are."

She nodded.

We did not stop again till the car came to rest easily before the great
oak door, which those who built White Ladies hung upon its tremendous
hinges somewhere in the 'forties of the sixteenth century.

* * * * *

"It is my duty," said Berry, "to inform you that on Wednesday I shall
not be available."

"Why?" said my wife.

"Because upon that day I propose to dispense justice in my capacity of a
Justice of the Peace. I shall discriminate between neither rich nor
poor. Beggars and billionaires shall get it equally in the neck.
Innocent and guilty alike----"

"That'll do," said Daphne. "What about Thursday?"