[Illustration: THE SAD HEATH.]
Through the sad heath white roads wandered, trickling hither and thither
helplessly. There was no set purpose in them; they meandered up the
great hill and sometimes ran together to support each other. Then,
fortified by the contact, they climbed on across the dusky upland, where
it rolled and fell and lifted steadily to the crown of the land: a
flat-headed clump of beech and oak with a fosse round about it. Only the
roads twisting through this waste and a pool or two scattered upon it
brought any light to earth; but there were flowers also, for the whins
dragged a spatter of dull gold through the sere and a blackthorn hedge
shivered cold and white, where fallow crept to the edge of the moors.
For the rest, from the sad-coloured sky to the sentinel pines that rose
in little detached clusters on every side, all was restrained and almost
melancholy. The pines specially distinguished this rolling heath. They
lifted their darkness in clumps, ascending to the hill-tops, spattered
every acre of the land, and sprang as infant plants under the foot of
the wanderer. Scarcely a hundred yards lacked them; and they ranged from
the least seedling to full-grown trees that rose together and thrust
with dim red branch and bough through their own darkness.
There was no wind on the heath, and few signs of spring. She had passed,
as it seemed, lighted the furzes, waked a thousand catkins on the dwarf
sallows in the bogs, and then departed elsewhere. One felt that the
deserted heath desired her return and regarded its obstinate winter
robes with impatience. It was an uplifted place, and seemed to shoulder
darkly out of the milder, mellower world beneath. Far below, an estuary
shone through the valley welter and ran a streak of dull silver from
south to north; while easterly rose up the grey horizons of the sea.
In the murk of that silent hour, a spirit of thirst seemed to animate
the heather and the marshes that oozed out beneath. The secret impressed
upon my conscious intelligence was one of suspense, a watchful and alert
attitude--an emotion shared by the trees and the thickets, the heath and
the hills. It ascended higher and higher to the frowning crest of the
land, where round woods made a crown for the wilderness and marked
castramentations of old time. So unchanging appeared this place that
little imagination was needed to bring back the past and revive a
vanished century when the legions flashed where now the great trees
frowned and a hive of men, loosed from a hundred galleys, swarmed hither
to dig the ditches and pile these venerable earthworks for a stronghold.
Thus the place lay in the lap of that tenebrous hour and waited for the
warm rain to loose its fountains of sap and brush the loneliness with
waking and welcoming green. It endured and hoped and seemed to turn
blind eyes from the pond and bog upward to question the gathering
clouds.
Nigh me, a persistent and inquiring thrush clamoured from a pine. I
could see his amber, speckled bosom shaking with his song.
"Why did he do it? Why did he do it? Why did he?"
He had asked the question a thousand times; and then a dark bird, that
flapped high and heavy through the grey air, answered him.
"God knows! God knows!" croaked the carrion crow.