ON BIGNOR HILL


They were riding along the top of the South Downs between Singleton and
Arundel, and when they came to where the old Roman road from Chichester
climbs over Bignor Hill, Stella Derrick raised her hand and halted. She
was then nineteen and accounted lovely by others besides Henry Thresk,
who on this morning rode at her side. She was delicately yet healthfully
fashioned, with blue eyes under broad brows, raven hair and a face pale
and crystal-clear. But her lips were red and the colour came easily into
her cheeks.

She pointed downwards to the track slanting across the turf from the brow
of the hill.

"That's Stane Street. I promised to show it you."

"Yes," answered Thresk, taking his eyes slowly from her face. It was a
morning rich with sunlight, noisy with blackbirds, and she seemed to him
a necessary part of it. She was alive with it and gave rather than took
of its gold. For not even that finely chiselled nose of hers could impart
to her anything of the look of a statue.

"Yes. They went straight, didn't they, those old centurions?" he said.

He moved his horse and stood in the middle of the track looking across a
valley of forest and meadow to Halnaker Down, six miles away in the
southwest. Straight in the line of his eyes over a shoulder of the down
rose a tall fine spire--the spire of Chichester Cathedral, and farther on