st of the grass had fallen, and all the
field lay flat and smooth, with the very green short grass in lanes
between the dead and yellow swathes.

These swathes we raked into cocks to keep them from the dew against our
return at daybreak; and we made the cocks as tall and steep as we could,
for in that shape they best keep off the dew, and it is easier also to
spread them after the sun has risen. Then we raked up every straggling
blade, till the whole field was a clean floor for the tedding and the
carrying of the hay next morning. The grass we had mown was but a little
over two acres; for that is all the pasture on my little tiny farm.

When we had done all this, there fell upon us the beneficent and
deliberate evening; so that as we sat a little while together near the
rakes, we saw the valley more solemn and dim around us, and all the
trees and hedgerows quite still, and held by a complete silence. Then I
paid my companion his wage, and bade him a good night, till we should
meet in the same place before sunrise.

He went off with a slow and steady progress, as all our peasants do,
making their walking a part of the easy but continual labour of their
lives. But I sat on, watching the light creep around towards the north
and change, and the waning moon coming up as though by stealth behind
the woods of No Man's Land.

THE ROMAN ROAD

The other day (it was Wednesday, and the air was very pure) I went into
the stable upon my way toward the wood, and there I saw my horse Monster
standing by himself, regarding nothingness. And when I had considered
what a shame it was to take one's pleasure in a wood and leave one's
helpless horse at home, I bridled him and saddled him and took him out,
and rode him the way that I had meant to go alone. So we went together
along the Stene under the North Wood until we got to the edge of the
forest, and then we took the green Ride to the right, for it was my
intention to go and look at the Roman road.

Behind my house, behind my little farm, there are as many miles of turf
as one cares to count, and then behind it also, but the other way, there
goes this deep and lonely forest. It is principally of beech, which is
the tree of the chalk, and no one has cut it or fenced it or thought
about it (except to love it), since the parts about my village took
their names: Gumber and Fairmile Bay Combe, the Nore, and the stretch
called No Man's Land.

Into the darkness of these trees I r