Adders on the Heath Read Free Page B

and making passage through a gap in the wayside gorse, he could run parallel to the road on the adjacent common. He crossed over and soon his shoes were sodden with dew.
    The road itself led into magnificent woods. He left the common and followed the stony track over a rough plank bridge, and then across another, beneath which the main stream ran. He paused on this second bridge and leaned on the parapet. The water below the left-hand side of the bridge ran deep and widened out into a sizeable pool. Richardson marked the pool as a possible swimming place, and then walked on. The woodland was open, and displayed, in all their grey-boled grandeur, magnificent beeches and several giant oaks. There also were holly trees whose girth gave a clue to their antiquity, and there were some ancient thorn trees on which the berries were bright in their autumn scarlet. Blackberries were ripe, or ripening, and every wild rose bush had its smooth, red, ovular fruits.
    Richardson followed the path along ruts made by foresters' carts and the indentations of the caterpillar wheels of tractors. He skirted muddy pools which rarely dried up all the year, and, pursuing his way, disturbed the sudden birds and the darting grey squirrels. At last he came to the fringe of the wood and to such a watery quagmire that his progress that way was halted. Beyond him, and on either side of the path, was a heather-covered, bracken-fronded common with never a path or road. He looked at his watch. It was more than time to turn back if he wanted breakfast.
    He retraced his steps-no hardship in this undiscovered country. The wood, except for landmarks in the form of one or two fine beeches which he had noted on his outward journey, looked completely different when traversed in the opposite direction. He regained the bridges and the road, and then took a narrow, built-up path (which a formidable notice prohibited equestrians from using) and, by brisk walking, came, as he had anticipated, on to the so-called lawn-really a part of the common-opposite the hotel. He crossed a couple of plank bridges over small and sluggish streams, and struck out across the grass. He arrived rather muddy, but in great spirits and extremely hungry for his breakfast, at just after nine o'clock.
    The defection of Denis, who was now not due to arrive until Monday morning, had made him consider how best he might employ the Saturday and the Sunday. He thought that, on these days, the quiet walks and excursions which he had so much enjoyed on the Thursday and Friday might be made less solitary by the invasion of week-end parties or by the local people who had Saturday and Sunday free. By the time breakfast was over he had made up his mind what to do. He would take a train to the second station down the line and from there follow his nose. There was a manor house marked on the map. He thought he might take a look at it.
    He looked up a train in the A.B.C. lent to him at the hotel, and set off, inconspicuously dressed in grey worsted trousers and a green-mixture tweed jacket, for the station. The train came in to time, but nobody, later on, came forward to declare that he had boarded it, and at the station where he alighted there was not a ticket-collector or a porter to be seen. Not knowing what to do with his ticket, and unwilling to hang about, he left it on the ledge of the ticket office and walked out into the sunshine.
    He had sheets 179 and 180 of the one-inch Ordnance Survey, but the roads proved to be adequately signposted and a walk of about three miles brought him to cross-roads in the middle of a large, flourishing, remarkably uninteresting village. At this point the map helped him, and he tramped along a country road, past fields, until he came to the manor house. Regrettably, but in accordance, he supposed, with modern usage, the mansion had been turned into flats. Cars stood about in what had been the entrance to the stables, and in the forecourt of the once pleasant old country