Picking it up he laughed like a child, and
remarked, "She knows me, this one does--and she loikes me."
Chapter Seventeen: An Old Road Leading Nowhere
So many and minute were the directions I received about the
way from the blessed cowkeeper, and so little attention did I
give them, my mind being occupied with other things, that they
were quickly forgotten. Of half a hundred things I remembered
only that I had to "bear to the left." This I did, although
it seemed useless, seeing that my way was by lanes, across
fields, and through plantations. At length I came to a road,
and as it happened to be on my left hand I followed it. It
was narrow, worn deep by traffic and rains; and grew deeper,
rougher, and more untrodden as I progressed, until it was
like the dry bed of a mountain torrent, and I walked on
boulder-stones between steep banks about fourteen feet high.
Their sides were clothed with ferns, grass and rank moss;
their summits were thickly wooded, and the interlacing
branches of the trees above, mingled with long rope-like
shoots of bramble and briar, formed so close a roof that I
seemed to be walking in a dimly lighted tunnel. At length,
thinking that I had kept long enough to a road which had
perhaps not been used for a century, also tired of the
monotony of always bearing to the left, I scrambled out on the
right-hand side. For some time past I had been ascending a
low, broad, flat-topped hill, and on forcing my way through
the undergrowth into the open I found myself on the level
plateau, an unenclosed spot overgrown with heather and
scattered furze bushes, with clumps of fir and birch trees.
Pages:
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202