He had been slow about it; but, thank
God, he had done at last what he wanted to do at the very beginning.
He folded the scrap of paper that was his receipt or quittance, put it
in his breast pocket, and rode on at a foot-pace. He was absolutely
alone, not a soul in sight wherever he turned his eyes, not a beast,
not a bird moving, the desolate brown heath and the sad gray sky alike
empty of life; straight ahead, about a mile distant, lay the Cross
Roads, the tavern, and the small hamlet of cottages, but as yet they
were hidden by a rise of the intervening ground; only the fringe of
cultivated land at the point where it met the barren waste indicated
the work or proximity of mankind. His face grew still darker as he
approached these fields and saw the cluster of houses on their edge.
He looked at the deep ditch that surrounded the outermost field; then
turning his head looked again at the heath, its bleak contours
mounting gradually till they showed an ugly ridge beyond which the
downs swelled up soft and vague against the hanging curtain of clouds.
And he thought of what lay on the far side of this long grass rampart
of down country--the fat-soiled valley, the other railway line, the
trains from the West of England, full of queer people, running by
night as well as by day.
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