sunset; and when the road, which for some time had been one long descent,
suddenly confronted us with a rough, perpendicular lane, overgrown with
bushes, that seemed more like a cart-track to the stars than a sensible
thoroughfare, we realized, with a certain indignant self-pity, that we
were walking in real earnest, out in the night and the storm, far from
human habitation.

"Nature cannot be so absurd," said I, "as to expect us to climb such a
road on such an evening! She must surely have placed a comfortable inn in
such a place as this, with ruddy windows of welcome, and a roaring fire
and a hissing roast." But, alas! our eyes scanned the streaming copses in
vain--nothing in sight but trees, rain and a solitary saw-mill, where an
old man on a ladder assured us in a broken singsong, like the
Scandinavian of the Middle West, that indeed Nature did mean us to climb
that hill, and that by that road only could we reach the Promised Land of
supper and bed.

And the rain fell and the wind blew, and Colin and I trudged on through
the murk and the mire, I silently recalling and commenting on certain
passages in certain modern writers in praise of walking in the rain. At
last the hill came to an end--we learned afterward that it was a good
mile high--and we stumbled out on to some upland wilderness, unlit by
star or window. Then we found ourselves descending again, and at last dim
shapes of clustered houses began to appear, and the white phantom of a
church. We could rather feel than see the houses, for the night was so
dark, and, though here was evidently a village, there was no sign of a
light anywhere, not so much as a bright keyhole; nothing but hushed,
shuttered shapes of deeper black in the general darkness. So English
villages must have looked, muffled up in darkness, at the sound of the
Conqueror's curfew.