"What, then?"
Gabriel, perhaps a little piqued by the comely
traveller's indifference, glanced back to where he had
witnessed her performance over the hedge, and said,
"Vanity."




CHAPTER II



NIGHT -- THE FLOCK -- AN INTERIOR -- ANOTHER INTERIOR


IT was nearly midnight on the eve of St. Thomas's, the
shortest day in the year. A desolating wind wandered
from the north over the hill whereon Oak had watched
the yellow waggon and its occupant in the sunshine of
a few days earlier.
Norcombe Hill -- not far from lonely Toller-Down
-- was one of the spots which suggest to a passer-by
that he is in the presence of a shape approaching the
indestructible as nearly as any to be found on earth.
It was a featureless convexity of chalk and soil -- an
ordinary specimen of those smoothly-outlined protuber-
ances of the globe which may remain undisturbed on
some great day of confusion, when far grander heights
and dizzy granite precipices topple down.