He paused every now and then to listen to the birds and admire the view. He had the air of one thoroughly enjoying his walk. Presently he turned off the main road, and wandered along a steep green lane, which was little more than a cart-track. Here he met no one. The country on either side was common land, sown with rocks and the poorest soil, picturesque, but almost impossible of cultivation. A few sheep were grazing upon the hills, but other sign of life there was none. Not a farmhouse—scarcely a keeper’s cottage in sight! It was a forgotten corner of a not unpopulous county—the farthest portion of a belt of primeval forest land, older than history itself. Macheson laughed softly as he reached the spot he had had in his mind, and threw his bag over the grey stone wall into the cool shade of a dense fragment of wood.
“So much,” he murmured softly, “for the lady of Thorpe!”
CHAPTER VI
CRICKET AND PHILOSOPHY
“
The instinct for games,” Wilhelmina remarked, “is one which I never possessed. Let us see whether we can learn something.”
In obedience to her gesture, the horses were checked, and the footman clambered down and stood at their heads. Deyes, from his somewhat uncomfortable back seat in the victoria, leaned forward, and, adjusting his eyeglass, studied the scene with interest.
“Here,” he remarked, “we have the ‘flannelled fool’ upon his native heath. They are playing a game which my memory tells me is cricket. Everyone seems very hot and very excited.”