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So came they to the plain of Hazeldale, which was a wide valley with a middling river winding about it, the wild-wood at its back toward the Tofts, and in front down-land nought wooded, save here and there a tree nigh a homestead or cot; for that way the land was builded for a space.
On the other side of the road were undulating fields that dwindled from sparse cultivation to bare down-land. There was no sign of any house except the distant mill, but directly over the summit of the hill, happily hidden, an ugly little red-brick mushroom of a town asserted itself, overgrowing in its unbeautiful growth the older picturesque village of Whitmansworth.
And here on these upper lands they saw that the pastures were much burned with the drought, albeit summer was not worn old. Now they went making due south toward the mountains, whose heads they saw from time to time rising deep blue over the bleak greyness of the down-land ridges.
The frozen particles of ice, brushed from the blades of grass by the wind, and borne across my face; the hard clatter of the horse's hoofs, beating a tune upon the ground; the stiff-tilled soil; the snowdrift, lightly eddying in the chalk-pit as the breeze ruffled it; the smoking team with the waggon of old hay, stopping to breathe on the hill-top, and shaking their bells musically; the whitened slopes and sweeps of Down-land lying against the dark sky, as if they were drawn on a huge slate!
Now fresher air, now glimpses of unenclosed Down-land with flapping crows flying over it whom we soon outfly, now the Sea, now Folkestone at a quarter after ten. 'Tickets ready, gentlemen! Demented dashes at the door. 'For Paris, sir? No hurry. Not the least. The Royal George takes no more heed of us than its namesake under water at Spithead, or under earth at Windsor, does.
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