'
This, of course, might just as well have been in early spring; but
everything else was deeply imbued with the sentiment of the later
year. There was no stir of insects in the grass. The sunshine was
more golden, and gave less heat than summer sunshine; and the
shadows under the hedge were somewhat blue and misty. It was only
in autumn that you could have seen the mingled green and yellow of
the elm foliage, and the fallen leaves that lay about the road, and
covered the surface of wayside pools so thickly that the sun was
reflected only here and there from little joints and pinholes in
that brown coat of proof; or that your ear would have been
troubled, as you went forward, by the occasional report of fowling-
pieces from all directions and all degrees of distance.
For a long time this dropping fire was the one sign of human
activity that came to disturb me as I walked. The lanes were
profoundly still. They would have been sad but for the sunshine
and the singing of the larks. And as it was, there came over me at
times a feeling of isolation that was not disagreeable, and yet was
enough to make me quicken my steps eagerly when I saw some one
before me on the road. This fellow-voyager proved to be no less a
person than the parish constable. It had occurred to me that in a
district which was so little populous and so well wooded, a
criminal of any intelligence might play hide-and-seek with the
authorities for months; and this idea was strengthened by the
aspect of the portly constable as he walked by my side with
deliberate dignity and turned-out toes.
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