It had been a surprising night. And long, endlessly long, and not ended yet. She yawned, and felt hungry. She fancied herself at home, cutting large crumbling slices from the loaf in the cupboard, and spreading them with a great deal of butter and the remains of the shrimp paste. But she did not know where she was, and it was too dark to venture homewards with no sense of direction. She grew impatient with the night and strained her ears for the sound of cock-crow. As if her imperious will had wrenched aside the covering of cloud, a faint glimmer delineated part of the horizon. Moonset or sunrise, westerly or easterly she did not know; but as she watched it doubtfully, thinking that it must be moonset, for it seemed to dwindle rather than increase, a breeze winnowed the air, and looking round her she saw on every side the first beginnings of light.
Sitting up, her hunger and sleepiness forgotten, and all the disappointments and enigmas of the Sabbath dismissed from her mind, she watched the spectacle of the dawn. Soon she was able to recognise her surroundings, she knew the place well, it was here that she had met the badger. The slope before her was dotted with close-fitting juniper bushes, and presently she saw a rabbit steal out from one of these, twitch its ears, and scamper off. The cloud which covered the sky was no longer a solid thing. It was rising, and breaking up into swirls of vapour that yielded to the wind. The growing day washed them with silver. Every moment the web of cloud seemed to rise higher and higher, as though borne upward by a rising tide of light. The rooks flew up cawing from the wood. Presently she heard the snap of a dead twig. Somebody was astir. Whistling to himself, a man came out of the wood. He walked with a peculiarly slow and easy gait, and he had a stick in his hand, an untrimmed rod pulled from the wood. He switched at the head of a tall thistle, and Laura saw the dew fly off the astonished blossom. Seeing her, he stopped short, as though he did not wish to intrude on her. He showed no surprise that she should be sitting on the hillside, waiting for the sun to rise. She smiled at him, grateful for his good manners, and also quite pleased to see a reasonable being again; and emboldened by this, he smiled also, and approached.
‘You are up very early, Miss Willowes.’
She did not recognise him, but that was no reason why he should not recognise her. She thought he must be a gamekeeper, for he wore gaiters and a corduroy coat. His face was brown and wrinkled, and his teeth were as white and even as a dog’s. Laura liked his appearance. He had a pleasant, rather detached air, which suited well with the early morning. She said:
‘I have been up all night.’
There was no inquisitiveness in his look; and when he expressed the hope that she felt none the worse for it, he spoke without servility or covert amusement.
‘I liked it very much,’ said Laura. Her regard for truth made her add: ‘Particularly when it began to be light. I was growing rather bored before then.’
‘Some ladies would feel afraid,’ said he.
‘I’m not afraid when I’m alone,’ she answered. ‘I lived in the country when I was a girl.’
He bowed his head assentingly. Something in his manner implied that he knew this already. Perhaps he had heard about her in the village.