er was
far too experienced in the rough humour of the buzzard family at this
game to come up twice near the same spot, unaccountably emerging from
opposite sides of the pool in succession, and bobbing again by the time
its adversary reached each place, so that at length the hawk gave up the
contest and flew away, a satanic moodiness being almost perceptible in
the motion of its wings.

The young lady now looked around her for the first time, and began to
perceive that she had run a long distance--very much further than she had
originally intended to come. Her eyes had been so long fixed upon the
hawk, as it soared against the bright and mottled field of sky, that on
regarding the heather and plain again it was as if she had returned to a
half-forgotten region after an absence, and the whole prospect was
darkened to one uniform shade of approaching night. She began at once to
retrace her steps, but having been indiscriminately wheeling round the
pond to get a good view of the performance, and having followed no path
thither, she found the proper direction of her journey to be a matter of
some uncertainty.

'Surely,' she said to herself, 'I faced the north at starting:' and yet
on walking now with her back where her face had been set, she did not
approach any marks on the horizon which might seem to signify the town.
Thus dubiously, but with little real concern, she walked on till the
evening light began to turn to dusk, and the shadows to darkness.

Presently in front of her Ethelberta saw a white spot in the shade, and
it proved to be in some way attached to the head of a man who was coming
towards her out of a slight depression in the ground. It was as yet too
early in the evening to be afraid, but it was too late to be altogether
courageous; and with balanced sensations Ethelberta kept her eye sharply
upon him as he rose by degrees into view. The peculiar arrangement of
his hat and pugree soon struck her as being that she had casually noticed
on a peg in one of the rooms of the 'Red Lion,' and when he came close
she saw that his arms diminished to a peculiar smallness at their
junction with his shoulders, like those of a doll, which was explained by
their being girt round at that point with the straps of a knapsack that
he carried behind him. Encouraged by the probability that he, like
herself, was staying or had been staying at the 'Red Lion,' she said,
'Can you tell me if this is the way back to Anglebury?'