But it was a most walkable afternoon, and the pleasant
road into the region which the station-master indicated as that I
was seeking invited the foot by its level stretch, sometimes
under wayside trees, but mostly between open fields, newly reaped
and still yellow with their stubble, or green with the rowen
clover. Sometimes it ran straight and sometimes it curved, but it
led so rarely near any human habitation that one would rather not
have met any tramps beside one's self on it. Presently I overtook
one, a gentle old farm-wife, a withered blonde, whom I helped
with the bundles she bore in either hand, in the hope that she
could tell me whether I was near Marston Moor or not. But she
could tell me only, what may have been of higher human interest,
that her husband had the grass farm of a hundred and fifty acres,
which we were coming to, for seventy-five pounds a year; and they
had their own cattle, sheep, and horses, and were well content
with themselves. She excused herself for not knowing more than
vaguely of the battle-field, as not having been many years in the
neighborhood; and being now come to a gate in the fields, she
thanked me and took her way up a grassy path to the pleasant
farmhouse I saw in the distance.
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