gleaming with lochs, with high blue hills showing northwards.

 

About five o’clock the carriage had emptied, and I was left alone as I had

hoped. I got out at the next station, a little place whose name I scarcely

noted, set right in the heart of a bog. It reminded me of one of those forgotten

little stations in the Karroo. An old station-master was digging in his garden,

and with his spade over his shoulder sauntered to the train, took charge of a

parcel, and went back to his potatoes. A child of ten received my ticket, and I

emerged on a white road that straggled over the brown moor.

 

It was a gorgeous spring evening, with every hill showing as clear as a cut

amethyst. The air had the queer, rooty smell of bogs, but it was as fresh as

mid-ocean, and it had the strangest effect on my spirits. I actually felt

light-hearted. I might have been a boy out for a spring holiday tramp, instead

of a man of thirty-seven very much wanted by the police. I felt just as I used

to feel when I was starting for a big trek on a frosty morning on the high veld.

If you believe me, I swung along that road whistling. There was no plan of

campaign in my head, only just to go on and on in this blessed, honest-smelling

hill country, for every mile put me in better humour with myself.

 

In a roadside planting I cut a walking-stick of hazel, and presently struck off

the highway up a by-path which followed the glen of a brawling stream. I

reckoned that I was still far ahead of any pursuit, and for that night might

please myself. It was some hours since I had tasted food, and I was getting very

hungry when I came to a herd’s cottage set in a nook beside a waterfall. A