For five days they led an absolutely idyllic life; loafing in green wildernesses and sleeping in the shadow of whispering woods; and this getting back to nature proved as much of a tonic to the two men as to the boy himself--refreshing both mind and body, putting red blood into their veins, and breathing the breath of God into their nostrils.
Having amply provisioned the caravan before starting, they went no nearer to any human habitation than they were obliged to do in passing from one district to another; and one day was so exact a pattern of the next that its history might have stood for them all: up with the dawn and the birds and into woodland pool or tree-shaded river; then gathering fuel and making a fire and cooking breakfast; then washing the utensils, harnessing the horses, and moving on again--sometimes Cleek driving, sometimes Narkom, sometimes the boy--stopping when they were hungry to prepare lunch just as they had prepared breakfast, then forging on again until they found some tree-hedged dell or bosky wood where they might spend the night, crooned to sleep by the wind in the leaves, and watched over by the sentinel stars.
So they had spent the major part of the week, and so they might have spent it all, but that chance chose to thrust them suddenly out of idleness into activity, and to bring them--here, in this Arcadia--face to face again with the evils of mankind and the harsh duty of the law.
It had gone nine o'clock on that fifth night when a curious thing happened: they had halted for the night by the banks of a shallow, chattering stream which flowed through a wayside spinney, beyond whose clustering treetops they had seen, before the light failed, the castellated top of a distant tower and, farther afield, the weathercock on an uplifting church spire; they had supped and were enjoying their ease--the two men sprawling at full length on the ground enjoying a comfortable smoke, while Dollops, with a mouth harmonica, was doing "Knocked 'Em in the Old Kent Road," his back against a tree, his eyes upturned in ecstasy, his long legs stretched out upon the turf, and his feet crossed one over the other--and all about them was peace; all the sordid, money-grubbing, crime-stained world seemed millions of miles away, when, of a sudden, there came a swift rush of bodies--trampling on dead leaves and brushing against live ones--then a voice cried out commandingly, "Surrender yourselves in the name of the king!" and scrambling to a sitting position, they looked up to find themselves confronted by a constable, a gamekeeper, and two farm labourers--the one with drawn truncheon and the other three with cocked guns.