When George and Bess came to the wood, they determined to make it their halting-place for a while. It was only afternoon, and there were a couple of good hours before it would be dark enough for them to enter the village safely.
They crept into the wood to a spot which had been a favourite one with them in their sweethearting days, and sat down.
The fresh air and the long walk had tired them, and after a while they fell asleep.
While the tired pilgrims rested, a pair of very different travellers passed leisurely along the high road.
They were an elderly clergyman and a young gentleman.
The clergyman was tall and burly, and wore his garb with a curious awkwardness, that would have impressed the critical observer with an idea that his living was a rural one.
The young gentleman, though dressed in the height of fashion, was a little gaudy about the necktie, and had a sharp, cunning look upon his face, and a decided squint in the deeply-set, eager, restless eyes, that seemed to take in the four points of the compass at once.
The clergyman and his son were staying at a local hostelry hard by for a day or two, and were enjoying the delightful walks in which the neighbourhood abounds.
They were remarkably quiet and uncommunicative at the old Lamb Inn, which had the honour of harbouring them; but evidently the fresh air had loosened their tongues.
For a clergyman and his son their style of conversation was, to say the least of it, peculiar.