46 A Green Track. 



plains, rising up from the hollows in dusky clouds. 

 But the cannon of the shadowy army give forth no 

 thunderous roar. These smouldering fires are not, 

 of course, peculiar to the hills, but the smoke shows 

 so much more at that elevation. 



At evening, if you watch the sunset from the top 

 of the rampart, as the red disc sinks to the horizon 

 and the shadows lengthen the trees below and the 

 old barn throwing their shadows up the slope the 

 eye is deceived by the position of the light, and 

 the hill seems much higher and steeper, looking down 

 from the summit, than it does at noonday. It is an 

 optical delusion. Here on the western side the grass 

 is still dry in the deep narrow valleys behind the 

 sun set long since over the earthwork and ridge, and 

 the dew is already gathering thickly on the sward. 



A broad green track runs for many a long, long 

 mile across the downs, now following the ridges, 

 now winding past at the foot of a grassy slope, then 

 stretching away through corn-field and fallow. It is 

 distinct from the wagon-tracks which cross it here 

 and there, for these are local only, and if traced up 

 land the wayfarer presently in a maze of fields, or 

 end abruptly in the rickyard of a lone farmhouse. 

 It is distinct from the hard roads of modern con- 

 struction which also at wide intervals cross its course, 

 dusty and glaringly- white in the sunshine. It is not 

 a farm track you may walk for twenty miles along 

 it over the hills ; neither is it the king's highway. 



For seven long miles in one direction there is not 

 so much as a wavside tavern ; then the traveller finds 

 a little cottage, with a bench under a shady s}-ca- 

 more and a trough for a thirsty hoi-se, situate where 



