amp in any open field with more sense of home and security
than the stateliest buildings of foreign cities could afford. And the
joy was that it was all mine alienably--groomed hedgerow, spotless
road, decent greystone cottage, serried spinney, tasselled copse,
apple-bellied hawthorn, and well-grown tree. A light puff of wind--it
scattered flakes of may over the gleaming rails--gave me a faint whiff
as it might have been of fresh cocoanut, and I knew that the golden
gorse was in bloom somewhere out of sight. Linneeus had thanked God on
his bended knees when he first saw a field of it; and, by the way, the
navvy was on his knees, too. But he was by no means praying. He was
purely disgustful.

The doctor was compelled to bend over him, his face towards the back of
the seat, and from what I had seen I supposed the navvy was now dead.
If that were the case it would be time for me to go; but I knew that so
long as a man trusts himself to the current of Circumstance, reaching
out for and rejecting nothing that comes his way, no harm can overtake
him. It is the contriver, the schemer, who is caught by the Law, and
never the philosopher. I knew that when the play was played, Destiny
herself would move me on from the corpse; and I felt very sorry for the
doctor.

In the far distance, presumably upon the road that led to Framlynghame
Admiral, there appeared a vehicle and a horse--the one ancient fly that
almost every village can produce at need. This thing was advancing,
unpaid by me, towards the station; would have to pass along the deep-cut
lane, below the railway-bridge, and come out on the doctor's side. I was
in the centre of things, so all sides were alike to me. Here, then, was
my machine from the machine. When it arrived; something would happen, or
something else. For the rest, I owned my deeply interested soul.

The doctor, by the seat, turned so far as his cramped position allowed,
his head over his left shoulder, and laid his right hand upon his lips.
I threw back my hat and elevated my eyebrows in the form of a question.
The doctor shut his eyes and nodded his head slowly twice or thrice,
beckoning me to come. I descended cautiously, and it was as the signs
had told. The navvy was asleep, empty to the lowest notch; yet his hand
clutched still the doctor's collar, and at the lightest movement (the
doctor was really very cramped) tightened mechanically, as the hand of
a sick woman tightens on that of the watcher. He h