52 Wild Life in a Southern County. 
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 cornfield and fallow. It is 
distinct from the waggon-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 construction 
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 wayside tavern ; then the traveller finds 
a little cottage, with a bench under a shady sycamore 
and a trough for a thirsty horse, situate where three 
such modern roads (also lonely enough) cross the old 
green track. Far apart, and far away from its course 
hidden among their ricks and trees a few farmsteads 
