I judged that the lie of the country would
bring me across some westward running road that went to his feet, but I
did not allow for the confusing veils of the woods. A quick turn plunged
me first into a green cutting brimful of liquid sunshine, next into a
gloomy tunnel where last year's dead leaves whispered and scuffled about
my tyres. The strong hazel stuff meeting overhead had not been cut for a
couple of generations at least, nor had any axe helped the moss-cankered
oak and beech to spring above them. Here the road changed frankly into a
carpetted ride on whose brown velvet spent primrose-clumps showed like
jade, and a few sickly, white-stalked bluebells nodded together. As the
slope favoured I shut off the power and slid over the whirled leaves,
expecting every moment to meet a keeper; but I only heard a jay, far off,
arguing against the silence under the twilight of the trees.
Still the track descended. I was on the point of reversing and working my
way back on the second speed ere I ended in some swamp, when I saw
sunshine through the tangle ahead and lifted the brake.
It was down again at once. As the light beat across my face my fore-wheels
took the turf of a great still lawn from which sprang horsemen ten feet
high with levelled lances, monstrous peacocks, and sleek round-headed
maids of honour--blue, black, and glistening--all of clipped yew. Across
the lawn--the marshalled woods besieged it on three sides--stood an
ancient house of lichened and weather-worn stone, with mullioned windows
and roofs of rose-red tile.
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