CHAPTER XXVI
A THORN BOUGH
Jack trudged down hill.
The night was not dark. Mrs. Jose had purposely chosen one on which the almanack informed her there would be a moon, so that the young people might not have to return in the dark. She was a considerate woman in all that she undertook.
But nearly all those who were assembled in her barn came from Axmouth, and would go home together. 'However,' said Mrs. Jose, 'a moon won't hurt and is advisable.'
Aloft great white clouds were drifting like icebergs in a polar sea, but below there was little wind. Occasionally, when one of these clouds came before the moon it partially eclipsed it, but was itself transformed into a luminous haze, with a halo about it.
Bindon grounds had been well timbered. Already, the finest trees had been cut down, and the grounds had been curtailed and cut up for the accommodation of cattle. Beneath the trees the shadows were as ink blots, but otherwise the sward was silver. A sufficient dew had fallen to catch the moonlight and be converted by it into pearl.
Jack walked down the road to the gate at the bottom of the descent, where the stream that whispered down the valley hushed for a moment as it dipped under the little bridge before the gate that opened on to the old Roman road which descended as a phosphorescent ribbon to Axmouth from Lyme, a stretch of the Fosse way that led direct from London to Land's End.
But at the gate he halted.
Here, in place of a stately entrance of piers, surmounted with balls, proper to give admission to the domain of a great mansion, was a shabby farmyard gate, for Bindon had been deserted by its gentle owners before the reign of Queen Anne, when park gates of this description came into fashion. On the wooden bar of the gate Jack leaned and considered. He heard men talking as they stood in the road. He could see lights twinkling in the windows of Axmouth.