d need to be, did you choose one
of them; so many were the tiny hands thrust out to detain you, from this
side and that. But this one was of a sterner sort, and even in its
shedding off of bank and hedgerow as it marched straight and full for
the open downs, it seemed to declare its contempt for adventitious
trappings to catch the shallow-pated. When the sense of injustice or
disappointment was heavy on me, and things were very black within, as on
this particular day, the road of character was my choice for that
solitary ramble when I turned my back for an afternoon on a world that
had unaccountably declared itself against me.

'The Knights' Road' we children had named it, from a sort of feeling
that, if from any quarter at all, it would be down this track we might
some day see Lancelot and his peers come pacing on their great
war-horses; supposing that any of the stout band still survived, in
nooks and unexplored places. Grown-up people sometimes spoke of it as
the 'Pilgrims' Way'; but I didn't know much about pilgrims--except
Walter in the Horselberg story. Him I sometimes saw, breaking with
haggard eyes out of yonder copse, and calling to the pilgrims as they
hurried along on their desperate march to the Holy City, where peace and
pardon were awaiting them. 'All roads lead to Rome,' I had once heard
somebody say; and I had taken the remark very seriously, of course, and
puzzled over it many days. There must have been some mistake, I
concluded at last; but of one road at least I intuitively felt it to be
true. And my belief was clinched by something that fell from Miss
Smedley during a history-lesson, about a strange road that ran right
down the middle of England till it reached the coast, and then began
again in France, just opposite, and so on undeviating, through city and
vineyard, right from the misty Highlands to the Eternal City.
Uncorroborated, any statement of Miss Smedley's usually fell on
incredulous ears; but here, with the road itself in evidence, she
seemed, once in a way, to have strayed into truth.

Rome! It was fascinating to think that it lay at the other end of this
white ribbon that rolled itself off from my feet over the distant downs.
I was not quite so uninstructed as to imagine I could reach it that
afternoon; but some day, I thought, if things went on being as
unpleasant as they were now--some day, when Aunt Eliza had gone on a
visit,--some day, we would see.

I tried to imagine what it woul