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They only walked for a short time and they did not keep to the road but went on to the moor itself and walked among the heath and bracken. After a little while they sat down and gave themselves up to the vast silence with here and there the last evening twitter of a bird in it. The note made the stillness greater.
The lush green water-meadows speckled with the heavy-fleeced sheep, the acres of corn-land reclaimed from heather and bracken, the vineyards on the southern slope of Crooksbury Hill, the rows of Hankley fish-ponds, the Frensham marshes drained and sown with vegetables, the spacious pigeon-cotes, all circled the great Abbey round with the visible labors of the Order.
And, in below the sunshine of the gorse, where rough Mother Earth should have been, there lay instead a soft sunset cloud, the tender cream-yellow and green of myriads of primroses and the just uncurling fronds of the bracken primroses in such unbroken sheets and masses as to give a weird effect of remoteness and impalpability to that which was solid and close at hand.
"I can jump higher than anything!" He meant when the Boy threw him, but of course he didn't want to say so. "Can you hop on your hind legs?" asked the furry rabbit. That was a dreadful question, for the Velveteen Rabbit had no hind legs at all! The back of him was made all in one piece, like a pincushion. He sat still in the bracken, and hoped that the other rabbits wouldn't notice.
Here the winding paths were bordered with golden moss, and sheltered by a tangled growth of bracken and bramble with now and then a little clump of heather or a patch of blue harebells. Every nook of that place grew familiar to them and had its special associations.
The clothing of the boys was inspected by the Indians, and everything of a bright nature was discarded. They were all dressed in smoked leather suits, with caps to match. This made them almost the colour of the rocks and dried ferns, or bracken, among which they would have to do a good deal of crawling.
He did the rise over by the chalk-pit crest a little puffily he had long since lost the Muscular Christian stride of early days; but Caddies was not at his work, and then, as he skirted the thicket of giant bracken that was beginning to obscure and overshadow the Hanger, he came upon the monster's huge form seated on the hill brooding as it were upon the world.
So saying, Sir Fidelis arose, and taking the wallet in one hand and setting the other 'neath Beltane's arm, led him to where, deep-bowered under screening willows, a fire burned cheerily, whereby were two beds of scented bracken.
The air was resonant with the purring of the night-jars, and every now and then he caught the loud clap of their wings as they swayed unsteadily through the furze and bracken. Overhead a trio of wild ducks flew across, from pond to pond, their hoarse cry descending through the darkness.
As he neared his home, pushing his way laboriously through the interlaced bracken and heaths which had never been cut for a score of years, he saw approaching him the tall, slender form of Don Silverio, moving slowly, for the heather was breast high, his little dog barking at a startled wood-pigeon. "They are anxious about you at your house," Don Silverio said with some sternness.
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