d the Wheatsheaf--it might have mustered the resolution
to go straight on, instead of going off at a tangent to Gattrell's
Farm, half a mile out of the way. Was it intimidated by a statement
that trespassers would be prosecuted, nailed to an oak-tree, legible
a hundred years ago, perhaps, when its nails were not rust, and really
held it tight--instead of, as now, merely countenancing its wish to
remain from old habit? It may have been so frightened in its timid
youth; but if so, surely the robust self-assertion of its straight
start for Gattrell's had in it something of contempt for the poor old
board, coupled with its well-known intention of turning to the left
and going slap through the wood the minute you (or it) got there. It
may even have twitted that board with its apathy in respect of
trespassers. Had the threat _ever_ been carried out?

The long short cut was, according to the aborigines, a goodish
step longer than the road, geometrically. But there was some
inner sense--moral, ethical, spiritual--somehow metaphysical or
supraphysical--in which it was a short cut, for all that. The road
was a dale farther, some did say, along of the dust. But, then, there
was no dust now, because it was all laid. So the reason why was allowed
to lapse, and the fact to take care of itself for once. Helped by an
illusion that a path through an undergrowth of nut-trees and an
overgrowth of oak on such a lovely afternoon as this wasn't distance
at all--even when you got hooked in the brambles--and by other
palliative incidents, it was voted a very short cut indeed. Certainly
not too long for Rosalind's breathing-space, and had it been even
a longer short cut she would have been well contented.

Every hour passed now, without a new recurrence of some bygone, was
going to give her--she knew it well beforehand--a sense of greater
security. And every little incident on the walk that made a
change in the rhythm of event was welcome. When they paused for
refreshments--ginger-beer in stone bottles--at Gattrell's, and old
Mrs. Gattrell, while she undid the corks, outlined the troubles of her
husband's family and her own, she felt grateful for both to have kept
clear of India and "the colonies." No memories of California or the
Arctic Circle could arise from Mrs. Gattrell's twin-sister Debory,
who suffered from information--internal information, mind you; an
explanation necessary to correct an impression of overstrain to the
mind in pursui