"I will go home and send them some refreshment," said Mrs Estcourt.

All the party rose and accompanied her. In the next field they pa.s.sed the mowers preparing to begin mowing again. Geoffrey and Valentine both tried to mow, but utterly failed; the point of the scythe persistently stuck into the ground.

"A' be a' akkerd tool for a body as bean't used to un," said the eldest of the men, taking out his stone rubber from the sling at his back, preparatory to giving the scythe a touch up after such rough handling; "and um bean't what um used to be when I wur a bwoy."

"How do you mean?" said Felix.

"Aw," said the mower, tilting his hat back, "th' blades be as good as ever um wur--thaay folk at Mells be th' vellers to make scythes. Thur bean't none as good as thaim. But it be th' handle, look'ee, as I means. I minds when thaay wur made of dree sarts of wood, a main bit more crooked than this yer stick, and sart o' carved a bit; doant 'ee see? It took a chap a week zumtimes to find a bit a' wood as ud do.

But, bless ee, a'moast anything does now."

Swish went the keen blade through the tall gra.s.s. They watched him a few minutes.

"Thur be some blight about," said the man; "scythe do sc.u.m up terrable,"

and he showed them the blade all covered with a greenish-white froth, supposed to be caused by insects. "Thur be blight up thur, look."

He pointed to a dark heavy cloud that seemed to float at a great height in the east.

"It will thunder," said May.

"Aw, no it wunt, miss," said the mower. "A' reckon as it'll be nation hot; thuck cloud be nothing but blight. Spile the fruit, bless'ee."

"So even the scythe handles used to be artistic," said Felix, as they walked away. "There used to be art and taste and workmanship even in so common a thing. It was made of three distinct pieces of wood, carefully finished off; men took days to find a piece. Now it is nothing but a stick smoothed by machinery. I _hate_ machinery. I like to see the artist in his work; to see the mark of the knife where the chip has been taken out. But the spirit of art flies when things are sent forth by machinery--hundreds exactly alike."

To May it was a great pleasure to hear him dilate in this way. Near the house they met Augustus, radiant with smiles, and perfectly loaded with the wooden bottles for the men.

"I knows I'm a fool," said he; "at least I ought to, since I'm told so forty times a day. But a fool must be sometimes right. 'Pend upon it, there's nothing like ale!"

At Greene Ferne, May found a letter for her which spoilt the day. It was from her grandfather, Andrew Fisher, of the Warren, written in great anger, and commanding her immediate return home, and to mind and bring that rug with her that had been at Greene Ferne ever since Christmas.

The old grasping miser, in his rage, remembered such a trifle as a travelling-rug. Fisher had sent a verbal message for his granddaughter before, which she had ventured to put off; now he wrote in a furious temper, and added at the foot that if that parson ever came a-nigh the Warren again he'd have him ducked in the mill-pool. So bitter had the mere thought made him that Felix wanted his money. There was nothing for it but for May to return, and she asked for her horse to be saddled.

Felix could hardly suppress his annoyance. May was much downcast, but Margaret cheered her.

"I will go with you," she said. "He was always nice to me. He is a regular old flatterer,"--(she peeped in the gla.s.s)--"only think, flattering at ninety! But a man must flatter, if he's a hundred! I shall get over him! I'll ride my chestnut, and I can stay with you, dear, can't I? and come back next evening."

So they left together. Geoffrey, in shaking hands with Margaret, tried to whisper, "May I come and meet you to-morrow evening?" but could not well manage it, Valentine being near.

"Be sure and return by the road, dear," said Mrs Estcourt--"the Downs are very lonely if you come by yourself, and you may lose your way."

"Oh, no," laughed Margaret. "I love the hills, and I know them all. I must come over the turf, mamma dear."

Now, Geoffrey heard this, and mentally noted it. He had his horse at Thorpe Hall, and he determined to ride and meet Margaret on the morrow.

CHAPTER FIVE.

EVENING.

"Aw, aim for th' Tump, measter; aim for th' Tump," said the carter, slanting his whip to indicate the direction. "When you gets thur, look'ee, go for th' Cas'l; and when you gets thur, go athwert the Vuzz toward th' Virs; and when you gets drough thaay, thur be Akkern Chace, and a lane as goes down to Warren. Tchek! Woaght!"

At the foot of the Downs, along whose base the highway road wound, Geoffrey had paused to take counsel of a carter, who had just descended with a load of flints, before venturing across the all-but-trackless hills. The man very civilly stopped his waggon and named the various landmarks by which he would have guided his own course to Andrew Fisher's. Geoffrey had started early in the evening, intending to go all the way to Warren House, for he carried with him the rug (strapped to the saddle) which Margaret and May had forgotten, and for which the rude old man had written. This rug, which Mrs Estcourt gave him, was in fact his pa.s.sport, for he scarcely knew how Margaret would take his coming to fetch her in that rather abrupt way. Guessing what the man meant more by the slant of his whip than his words, he turned off the road on to the sward, and ascended the hill.

A long narrow shadow of man and horse, disproportionately stretched out, raced before him along the slope. The hoofs of the grey hardly cut the firm turf, dry with summer heat; the vivid green of spring had already gone, and a faint brown was just visible somewhere in the gra.s.s. Dark boulder stones--sa.r.s.ens--bald and smooth, thrust their shoulders out of the sward here and there; hollowed out into curious cuplike cavities, in which, after a shower, the collected raindrops remained imprisoned in tiny bowls hard as the fabled adamant of mediaeval story. Round white bosses--white as milk, and globular like cannon-shot--dotted the turf, fungi not yet ripened into the dust of the puff-ball. Now and again the iron shoes dashed an edible mushroom to pieces, turning the pink gills upwards to shrivel and blacken in the morrow's sun. The bees rose with a shrill buzz from the white clover, which is the shepherd's sign of midsummer. Swiftly the grey sped along the slopes, the shadow racing before grew longer and fainter as the beams of the sun came nearly horizontally. Already the ridges cast a shadow into the hollows--into the narrow coombes, where great flints and chalk fragments had rolled down and strewed the ground as with the wreck of a t.i.tanic skirmish.

Thickets of green furze tipped with yellow bloom, and beneath, peeping out, the pale purple heath-flower. On the stunted hawthorn bushes standing alone, stern sentinels in summer's heat and winter's storm, green peggles hardening, which autumn would redden and ripen for the thrush. Odorous thyme and yellow-bird's-foot lotus embroidering the gra.s.sy carpet; wide breadths of tussocky gra.s.s, tall and tough, which the sheep had left untouched, and where the hare crouched in her form, hearkening to the thud of the hoofs.

On past the steep wall of an ancient chalk-quarry, spotted with red streaks and stains as of rusty iron, where the plough-boys search for pyrites, and call them thunderbolts and "gold," for when broken the radial metallic fibres glisten yellow. Past a field of oats, rising hardly a foot high in the barren soil--in the corner an upturned plough with rusty share and wooden handles painted red. Down below in the plains between the hills squares of drooping barley and bold upstanding wheat, whose tender green the sun had invaded with advancing hues of gold. Over all the brooding silence of the summer eve, one brown lark alone singing in the air above the plain, far away from the distant ridge the faint tinkle of a sheep-bell. Now the sun was down the lower eastern atmosphere thickened with a dull red; the shepherds discerned the face of the sky, and said to-morrow would be fine.

Up the steep side of the "Tump" at last, slackening speed perforce, and checking the grey on the summit. It was a great round hill, detached, and somewhat like a huge bowl inverted, with a small circular level s.p.a.ce, on what at a distance seemed an almost pointed apex, a s.p.a.ce bare of aught but close-cropped herbage. Westwards was the dim vale, a faint mist blotting out steeple and tower--a mist blending with the sky at the horizon, and there all aglow. Eastwards, ridge upon ridge, hill after hill, with spurs running out into the narrow plains between, and deep coombes. He gazed earnestly over these, looking for signs and landmarks, but found none. The rough trail was lost--the hoof marks cut in the winter when the earth was soft were filled up by the swelling turf, and covered over with thyme. Those who laboured by day in the plains, weeding the fields, were gone down to their homes in the hamlets hidden in the valleys. At a venture he struck direct for the east, anxious to lose no time; for he began to fear he should miss Margaret, and soon afterwards luckily crossed the path of a shepherd-lad, whistling as he and his s.h.a.ggy dog wended for "whoam."

"Which is the way to Mr Fisher's?" asked Geoffrey.

"Thaay be goin' into th' Mash to-morrow," answered the boy, whose thoughts were differently engaged.

"Tell me the way to Mr Fisher's--the Warren."

"We be got shart o' keep; wants zum rain, doan't 'ee zee?"

"Can't you answer a question?"

"Thur's a main sight o' tackle in the Mash vor um."

He was so used to being stopped and asked about his sheep that he took it for granted Geoffrey was putting the same accustomed interrogatories.

Every farmer cross-examines his neighbour's shepherd when he meets him.

The "Mash" was doubtless a meadow reclaimed from a marsh. "Land be terrable dry, zur."

"Will you listen to me?" angrily. "Where's the Warren?"

"Aw, mebbe you means ould Fisher's?"

"I mean Mr Fisher's."

"A' be auver thur," pointing north-east.

"How far?"

"Aw, it be a akkerd road," doubtfully, as he looked Geoffrey up and down, and it dawned on him slowly that it was a stranger.

"I'll give you a quart if you will show me."

"Wull ee? Come on." The beer went at once right to the nervous centre and awoke all his faculties. He led Geoffrey across the plain and up a swelling shoulder of down, on whose ridge was a broad deep fosse and green rampart.

"This be th' Cas'l," said the guide, meaning entrenchments--earthworks are called "castles." In one spot the fosse was partly filled up, and an opening cut in the rampart, by which he rode through and found the "castle," a vast earthwork of unknown antiquity.

"Mind thaay vlint-pits," said the boy.

The flint-diggers had been at work here long ago--deep gullies and holes enc.u.mbered the way, half-hidden with thistles and furze. The place was honeycombed; it reminded Geoffrey of the Australian gold-diggings. He threaded his way slowly between these, and presently emerged on the slope beyond the "castle."

"Now which way is it?" he asked, glancing doubtfully at the hills still rolling away in unbroken succession.

"Yellucks," said the boy, meaning "Look here," and he pointed at a dark object on a distant ridge, which Geoffrey made out to be a copse.

"Thur's Moonlight Virs."