The boy picked his way as he
chose--there were no barriers here. Plodding behind, I saw nothing, at
one time, but the back of the chaise, tilted up in the air, both boy and
pony being invisibly buried in the steep descent of the hill. At other
times, the pitch was all the contrary way; the whole interior of the
ascending chaise was disclosed to my view, and above the chaise the pony,
and above the pony the boy--and, ah, my luggage swaying and rocking in
the frail embraces of the rope that held it. Twenty times did I
confidently expect to see baggage, chaise, pony, boy, all rolling down
into the bottom of a valley together. But no! Not the least little
accident happened to spoil my enjoyment of the day. Politically
contemptible, Finch's boy had his merit--he was master of his subject as
guide and pony-leader among the South Down Hills.
Arrived at the top of (as it seemed to me) our fiftieth grassy summit, I
began to look about for signs of the village.
Behind me, rolled back the long undulations of the hills, with the
cloud-shadows moving over the solitudes that we had left. Before me, at a
break in the purple distance, I saw the soft white line of the sea.
Beneath me, at my feet, opened the deepest valley I had noticed yet--with
one first sign of the presence of Man scored hideously on the face of
Nature, in the shape of a square brown patch of cleared and ploughed land
on the grassy slope.
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