watch. "We'd better be getting back, Linn. We'll just be in time to meet
your people coming out of church."

So they turned and walked leisurely across the gorse-covered downs until
they reached the broad and dusty highway leading towards Winstead
village. And then again they struck into a by-lane with tall hedges, the
banks underneath which were bright with stitchwort and speedwell and
white dead-nettle. Now and again, through a gap or a gate, they caught a
glimpse of the lush meadows golden with buttercups; in one of them there
was a small black pony standing in the shadow of a wide-spreading elm.
They passed some cottages with pretty gardens in front; they stopped for
a second to look at the old-fashioned columbine and monkshood, the
none-so-pretty, the yellow and crimson wall-flower, the peony roses.
Then always around them was this gracious silence, which seemed so
strange after the roar of London; and if the day promised to become
still hotter, at least they had this welcome breeze, that rustled the
quick-glancing poplars, and stirred the white-laden hawthorns, and kept
the long branches of the wych-elms and chestnuts swaying hither and
thither. They were not talking much now; one of them was thinking of a
pair of gray eyes.

At last they came to a turnstile, and, passing through that, found
themselves in one of those wide meadows; at the farther side of it the
red-tiled roof, the gray belfry, and slated spire of Winstead Church
just showed above the masses of green foliage. They crossed the meadow
and entered the churchyard. A perfect silence reigned over the place;
they could not hear what was going on within the small building; out
here there was no sound save the chirping of the birds and the
continuous murmur of the trees. They walked about, looking thoughtfully
at the gravestones--many of them bearing names familiar enough to them