within reach, or could probably call to the soldiers of the guard.

"This _is_ annoying," said Felix, ready to give up his enterprise. "How
ever can I get into the city?"

The old boatman grinned, but said nothing, and returned to a net which
he was mending. He made no answer to the further questions Felix put to
him. Felix then shouted to the warder; the soldier looked once, but paid
no more heed. Felix walked a little way and sat down on the grass. He
was deeply discouraged. These repulses, trifles in themselves, assumed
an importance, because his mind had long been strung up to a high pitch
of tension. A stolid man would have thought nothing of them. After a
while he arose, again asking himself how should he become a leader, who
had not the perseverance to enter a city in peaceful guise?

Not knowing what else to do, he followed the creek round the foot of the
hill, and so onwards for a mile or more. This bank was steep, on account
of the down; the other cultivated, the corn being already high. The
cuckoo sang (she loves the near neighbourhood of man) and flew over the
channel towards a little copse. Almost suddenly the creek wound round
under a low chalk cliff, and in a moment Felix found himself confronted
by another city. This had no wall; it was merely defended by a ditch and
earthwork, without tower or bastion.

The houses were placed thickly together; there were, he thought, six or
seven times as many as he had previously seen, and they were thatched or
shingled, like those in his own country. It stood in the midst of the
fields, and the corn came up to the fosse; there were many people at
work, but, as he noticed, most of them were old men, bowed and feeble. A
little way farther he saw a second boathouse; he hastened thither, and