On the top of the Downs, facing the wind that blew straight from the sun
sinking over Newhaven into the sea, they paused to breathe. Beneath
them stretched the Weald, and the great saucer of Pevensey Bay ringed
about with a line of brown sand fringed with foam. Northward was
Crowborough Beacon, the Ashdown Forest Ridge, and the hills about Battle
Abbey. Southward, and the way of the setting sun, the Downs ran out in
huge spurs, line behind line of them, into the shining splendour of the
sea, to break off abruptly in the white cliffs of the Seven Sisters. The
hills were bare and bleak in their austere yet rounded strength,
stripped of trees, clothed only in resplendent gorse, here a squat
haystack dumped upon a ridge against the sky, there a great patch of
plough let into the green.

"By Jove!" cried the young man; and the girl thrilled to him because she
felt he loved what was so much to her.

"Some space," panted the old man, climbing back to his seat, and tucking
the rug around him. "Room to stretch a hoss here; and somethin' for his
windpipe better'n Owlbridge's lung-tonic."

Boy said nothing but stood breathing deep and with quiet eyes. At her
side was Billy Bluff, his shaggy hair blown back from his forehead and
astrew across his face, lifting his nose as though to sniff the sunset.

They jogged quietly along the crest of the hills, travelling always
toward the sun, over the ancient Pilgrim's Way that runs from Pevensey,
by the Holy Well in Cow Gap, and the Lamb on the hill at Eastbourne,
past the Star at Alfiriston along the top of the Downs to that cathedral
beyond the Arun, once a chapel of wood, whence St. Wilfrid set out to