A fox slunk across the road right in front of me, and plunged into a wood; probably having the time of his life just now, with most of the hunt somewhere in France.
The springs were coming to life again, after the heavy rain, and water burbled along at the side of the lane, or tumbled out from the rocks at the roadside in tiny waterfalls.
The orchard trees were flecked all over with gold, or pale yellow, or bright crimson—surely we never had a more abundant apple year than this one.
It was such a wonderful afternoon: I was bound to go on wandering.
At last I came to the end of the lanes and found myself on an open hilltop. As the fresh bracing air met me full in the face, I began to feel hungry. I looked at my watch: it was five o’clock. I looked at the landscape, and realised that, though I didn’t know where I was, I was certainly miles away from any tea.
I paused and considered: Should I carefully retrace my steps? That always seems a poor-spirited way of getting home again, even though you are lost! On all sides stretched an expanse of hilly country, grey lichen-covered boulders, yellow-flowered gorse, wiry mauve and purple heather, and a wealth of green, and bronze, and golden tinted bracken, with occasional woods and larch plantations. There was a general hum of bees and insects in the air, and a pheasant rose from the ground close to me and flew with a _whirr_ into a little coppice near by.
A sign-board was lying on the ground by the gate leading into the coppice. It was the worse for wind and weather, but one could still read the alarming warning, “Trespassers will be prosecuted!” Who would trespass, and who would prosecute, on that wild bit of moorland, I wonder? The only being in sight was a rabbit, sitting motionless close beside the prostrate notice and studying me silently with the air of a special constable! Yet even he went off and left me quite alone.
At that moment I caught sight of a chimney over the spur of the hill. I felt convinced it must be attached to a fireplace, and surely there would be a kettle on that fire. I made a bee-line for the place.
To the eye of the town-dweller, hill and moorland distances are apt to be deceptive; the house proved to be much farther off than I had at first imagined. But this gave added zest to expedition; I determined to reach it though I only arrived in time to put up there for the night. A nearer view showed the cottage to be the fag-end of a small hamlet lying snugly in the protecting hollow of the hills.