mebody off
instead of having been left behind. For all that, he waited a minute
or two, studying a time-table, to avoid the risk of overtaking the
hotel porter; and then made his way by back streets out of the town.
For some miles, the road he took ran south up a well-cultivated valley,
past turnip and stubble fields and smooth pasture; and then changed to
a rough stony track that climbed a hill.

A turn shut in the valley when he reached higher ground, and a long
stretch of moor rolled away ahead. Foster thought these sharp
transitions from intensive cultivation to the sterile wilds were
characteristic of southern Scotland. It had rained since he left
Hawick, but now the sun shone down between the clouds and bright gleams
and flying shadows chased each other across the waste. To the south
the sky was clear and shone with a lemon-yellow glow, against which the
rounded hills rose, delicately gray. In one place there was a gap that
Foster thought was Liddesdale, and his path led across the latter
towards the head of Tyne. Not a house broke the sweep of withered
grass and heath, and only the crying of plover that circled in the
distance disturbed the silence.

Foster liked the open trail and went on with a light step, until as he
crossed the watershed and the country sloped to the south, he came to a
wire fence and saw the black mouth of a railway tunnel beneath. It was
now about two o'clock, and feeling hungry, he sat down where a bank cut
off the wind, and took out some food he had bought at Hawick. He did
not know if he found the shining rails and row of telegraph posts that
curved away down the hillside out of place, but somehow they made him
feel foolishly unconventional. His boots and mackintosh were wet, he
was lunching on sweet biscuits and gingerbread, and did not know where
he would spend the night, although it would not be at a comfortable
hotel. Until he saw the tunnel, he had felt at home in the wilds and
might have done so yet, had he, for example, been driving a flock of
sheep; but the railway was disturbing.

In this country, people traveled by steam-heated trains, instead of on
foot, and engaged a lawyer to defend them from their enemies. He was
going back to the methods of two or three centuries ago, and not even
doing this properly, since the moss-troopers who once rode through
those hills carried lances instead of a check-book, which was after all
his best weapon. He laughed and felt hims