CHAPTER I
WHICH INTRODUCES A YOUNG AUTHOR
A strange, mournful song broke the stillness of a hot July afternoon, and caused two pedestrians to come to a halt in a lane on which dust lay thick.
On either side were high banks, surmounted by unclipped hedges.
One of the pedestrians, a young and athletic man, had climbed the bank nearer to him in a second, and was peering through a gap in the hedge, where nothing met his gaze but miles of smiling country, dotted by farms at long intervals, a bungalow covered with rambler roses, and a white house on the border of a wood.
“Can you see anybody, sir?” asked the man in the lane, who was dressed as a farmer.
The weird singing rose again.
“I should take it for a sea-gull, sir,” said the puzzled farmer, “except that we are a good five miles from the sea here.”
The young man sprang back into the lane, causing a cloud of white dust to rise. His clean-shaven face had a troubled expression.
“It sounded to me like a woman chanting a dirge.”