en of the nearer hills melt away
into delicate blues and rosy greys in the distance. And then in winter
the clouds play such tricks with the soft rounded hills and their white
chalk sides, which chalk will reveal itself in all its nakedness every
here and there, that it is often easy to imagine yourself in
Switzerland, and difficult exceedingly to tell where the downs end and
the clouds begin, so softly have they blended together, those grey
clouds, those white and purple downs. No, the downs are not monotonous
to those who look with careful eyes, at least, though the casual
observer may see nothing in them but multitudes of sheep. Unique they
may be, unlike the rest of England they certainly are, but not
monotonous. And then the dales, with the villages nestling in the
bottom, are so picturesque, and the green pastures, separated by dykes,
have a homelike appearance, with the small black Sussex cattle with
their long white horns, at least to a Sussex eye.

Over some of these meadows the carpenter, with the little French baby in
his arms, now made his way. Hitherto he had been lucky and had met no
one, but now he was approaching a village a few miles from Lewes, which,
for the purposes of this story, we will call Bournemer, and though the
sun had set, it was still too light for him to risk being recognised, so
he still kept to the fields, which he could the more easily do, as the
house he sought was nearly a mile from the village. At last he saw it
standing in the next field with a clump of trees on one side of it; it
was little more than a cottage, though from the sheds adjoining it might
have been taken for a small farmhouse; it was sheltered from the north
by the down at the foot of which it lay, its red roof telling well
against the soft grey background in the evening light. It faced the
field, the road at the foot of the down running at the back of it, and
already there was a light in one of the lower rooms; the front door was
closed, but the gate of the field was open, details which the carpenter
took in at a glance, and interpreted to mean that the shepherd was gone
to fold his sheep for the night, and his wife was at home awaiting his
return to supper.

"He will be back soon. I must be quick; now is my time," said the
carpenter to himself, making his way towards the house by the clump of
trees, which afforded him a little shelter. Here he paused for a few
minutes, and, after listening intently, put the baby on