that long nearly vertical ascent of blinding white road, Mr.
Hoopdriver hesitated. It might take them twenty minutes to mount
that. Beyond was empty downland perhaps for miles. He decided to
return to the inn and snatch a hasty meal.

At the inn they gave him biscuits and cheese and a misleading
pewter measure of sturdy ale, pleasant under the palate, cool in
the throat, but leaden in the legs, of a hot afternoon. He felt a
man of substance as he emerged in the blinding sunshine, but even
by the foot of the down the sun was insisting again that his
skull was too small for his brains. The hill had gone steeper,
the chalky road blazed like a magnesium light, and his front
wheel began an apparently incurable squeaking. He felt as a man
from Mars would feel if he were suddenly transferred to this
planet, about three times as heavy as he was wont to feel. The
two little black figures had vanished over the forehead of the
hill. "The tracks'll be all right," said Mr. Hoopdriver.

That was a comforting reflection. It not only justified a slow
progress up the hill, but at the crest a sprawl on the turf
beside the road, to contemplate the Weald from the south. In a
matter of two days he had crossed that spacious valley, with its
frozen surge of green hills, its little villages and townships
here and there, its copses and cornfields, its ponds and streams
like jewelery of diamonds and silver glittering in the sun. The
North Downs were hidden, far away beyond the Wealden Heights.
Down below was the little village of Cocking, and half-way up the
hill, a mile perhaps to the right, hung a flock of sheep grazing
together. Overhead an anxious peewit circled against the blue,
and every now and then emitted its feeble cry. Up here the heat