hite road.

As the six wanderers broke out upon this thoroughfare, they saw the
white road blocked by what looked like a long row of carriages, such a
row of carriages as might close the approach to some house in Park Lane.
Along the side of these carriages stood a rank of splendid servants, all
dressed in the grey-blue uniform, and all having a certain quality of
stateliness and freedom which would not commonly belong to the servants
of a gentleman, but rather to the officials and ambassadors of a great
king. There were no less than six carriages waiting, one for each of the
tattered and miserable band. All the attendants (as if in court-dress)
wore swords, and as each man crawled into his carriage they drew them,
and saluted with a sudden blaze of steel.

"What can it all mean?" asked Bull of Syme as they separated. "Is this
another joke of Sunday's?"

"I don't know," said Syme as he sank wearily back in the cushions of his
carriage; "but if it is, it's one of the jokes you talk about. It's a
good-natured one."

The six adventurers had passed through many adventures, but not one
had carried them so utterly off their feet as this last adventure of
comfort. They had all become inured to things going roughly; but things
suddenly going smoothly swamped them. They could not even feebly imagine
what the carriages were; it was enough for them to know that they were
carriages, and carriages with cushions. They could not conceive who
the old man was who had led them; but it was quite enough that he had
certainly led them to the carriages.

Syme drove through a drifting darkness of trees in utter abandonment.
It was typical of him that while he had carried his bearded chin forward
fiercely so long as anything could be done, when the whole business was
taken out of his hands he fell back on the cushions in a frank collapse.

Very gradually and very vaguely he realised into what rich roads the
carriage was carrying him. He saw that they passed the stone gates of
what might have been a park, that they began gradually to climb a hill
which, while wooded on both sides, was somewhat more orderly than a
forest. Then there began to grow upon him, as upon a man slowly waking
from a healthy sleep, a pleasure in everything. He felt that the hedges
were what hedges should be, living walls; that a hedge is like a human
army, disciplined, but all the more alive. He saw high elms behind the
hedges, and vaguely thought how happy boys wou