ysterious voice, "that it is not safe
to be alone at midnight on this long lonely road--the loneliest place
in all Salisbury Plain?" "The safest," I said. "Safe as the Tower of
London--the protectors of all England are there." "Ah, there's where the
danger is!" she returned. "If you meet some desperate man, a deserter
with his rifle in his hand perhaps, do you think he would hesitate about
knocking you over to save himself and at the same time get a little
money to help him on his way?"

I smiled at her simulated anxiety for my safety, and set forth when it
was very dark but under a fine starry sky. The silence, too, was very
profound: there was no good-bye from crowing cock or hooting owl on this
occasion, nor did any cyclist pass me on the road with a flash of light
from his lamp and a tinkle from his bell. The long straight road on the
high down was a dim grey band visible but a few yards before me, lying
across the intense blackness of the earth. By day I prefer as a rule
walking on the turf, but this road had a rare and peculiar charm at this
time. It was now the season when the bird's-foot-trefoil, one of the
commonest plants of the downland country, was in its fullest bloom, so
that in many places the green or grey-green turf as far as one could see
on every side was sprinkled and splashed with orange-yellow. Now
this creeping, spreading plant, like most plants that grow on the
close-cropped sheep-walks, whose safety lies in their power to root
themselves and live very close to the surface, yet must ever strive to
lift its flowers into the unobstructed light and air and to overtop or
get away from its crowding neighbours. On one side of the road, where
the turf had been cut by the spade in a sharp line, the plant had found
a rare opportunity to get space and light and had thrust out such a
multitude of bowering sprays, projecting them beyond the turf, as to
form a close band or rope of orange-yellow, which divided the white road
from the green turf, and at one spot extended unbroken for upwards of a
mile. The effect was so singular and pretty that I had haunted this road
for days for the pleasure of seeing that flower border made by nature.
Now all colour was extinguished: beneath and around me there was a
dimness which at a few yards' distance deepened to blackness, and above
me the pale dim blue sky sprinkled with stars; but as I walked I had the
image of that brilliant band of yellow colour in my mind.

By an