to the university are to be called 'summer
hols' or 'long vac') a discussion was held after breakfast as to
procedure. Robert was sorry, but he had to give himself to the Ethics:
he had one day in which to settle the business of friendship and
pleasure (long neglected), and he had discovered to his horror that
some pieces of Aristotle must be learned by heart with a view to
translation. Margaret had to go to a dentist at Plymouth. At last
Martin asked Viola Cartmell to come out on the moor and to his joy she
assented.

They went by car to Merivale Bridge and then climbed up to Maiden Hill
and Cowsic Head. It was a superb October day. A great south wind came
up from the sea, salt and stinging but with no load of rain. Down in
the village the autumn had kindled the first fire in the woods and no
hue of flame was absent from the leaves. Shimmering with green and
yellow, gold and copper, the boughs made music for ear and eye. And on
the moor there was the wind and the sky and the infinite sweep of ridge
after ridge, broken with harsh tors and intractable granite. It may be
that the brave struggle of the dying year has its effect on man, for
there is something challenging in a good autumn day, something that
lifts and braces a man as spring can never do. Spring, at its best, is
languorous and its pleasures cloying, but autumn is a rousing friend
and makes exquisite the burden of life.

As they ate their sandwiches by the Bear Down Man, Martin could not
refrain from quoting:

"'And oh the days, the days, the days,
When all the four were off together:
The infinite deep of summer haze,
The roaring charge of autumn weather.'"

And indeed it was in the face of a charge as of cavalry that they
fought their way down to Two Bridges. There is rough going where the
moormen have cut for peat and trenched the heathery ridges in their
labour: and now, in addition to the need of leaping the rifts and
skirting green morasses, they had to battle with a wind that shrieked
and wrenched and gave no quarter. They talked but little until they
sheltered in a hollow. Then Martin took up the thread of an earlier
conversation.

"Do you really believe in this Liberalism?" he asked.

"Yes, of course."

"But do you think modern Liberal politics have any connection with
Liberalism?"

"Not much, I admit."

"Then I don't understand your point."

"It's quite simple. I believe vaguely in Liberalism, but we live in