Again it was all empty, and my heart began to
rise.
For more than an hour I sat close in the border of the trees, and
no hare or eagle could have kept a more particular watch. When
that hour began the sun was already set, but the sky still all
golden and the daylight clear; before the hour was done it had
fallen to be half mirk, the images and distances of things were
mingled, and observation began to be difficult. All that time not
a foot of man had come east from Silvermills, and the few that had
gone west were honest countryfolk and their wives upon the road to
bed. If I were tracked by the most cunning spies in Europe, I
judged it was beyond the course of nature they could have any
jealousy of where I was: and going a little further home into the
wood I lay down to wait for Alan.
The strain of my attention had been great, for I had watched not
the path only, but every bush and field within my vision. That was
now at an end. The moon, which was in her first quarter, glinted a
little in the wood; all round there was a stillness of the country;
and as I lay there on my back, the next three or four hours, I had
a fine occasion to review my conduct.
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