It was not more than forty yards from the barn to the wood:  there was no mound or hedge, but a narrow, deep, and dry watercourse, a surface drain, ran across.  Stooping a little and taking off my hat, I walked in this, so that the wheat each side rose above me and gave a perfect shelter.  This precaution was necessary, because on the right there rose a steep Down, from whose summit the level wheat-fields could be easily surveyed.  So near was it that I could distinguish the tracks of the hares worn in the short grass.  But if you take off your hat no one can distinguish you in a wheat-field, more particularly if your hair is light:  nor even in a hedge.

Where the drain or furrow entered the wood was a wire-netting firmly fixed, and over it tall pitched palings, sharp at the top.  The wood was enclosed with a thick hawthorn hedge that looked impassable; but the keeper’s footsteps, treading down the hedge-parsley and brushing aside the ‘gicks,’ guided me behind a bush where was a very convenient gap.  These signs and the smooth-worn bark of an ash against which it was needful to push proved that this quiet path was used somewhat frequently.

Inside the wood the grass and the bluebell leaves—­the bloom past and ripening to seed—­so hung over the trail that it was difficult to follow.  It wound about the ash stoles in the most circuitous manner—­now to avoid the thistles, now a bramble thicket, or a hollow filled with nettles.  Then the ash poles were clothed with the glory of the woodbine—­one mass of white and yellow wax-like flowers to a height of eight or nine feet, and forming a curtain of bloom from branch to branch.

After awhile I became aware that the trail was approaching the hill.  At the foot it branched; and the question arose whether to follow the fork that zig-zagged up among the thickets or that which seemed to plunge into the recesses beneath.  I had never been in this wood before—­the time was selected because it was probable that the keeper would be extremely occupied with his pheasant chicks.  Though the earth was so hard in the exposed rick-yard, here the clayey ground was still moist under the shadow of the leaves.  Examining the path more closely, I easily distinguished the impression of the keeper’s boot:  the iron toe-plate has left an almost perfect impression, and there were the deep grooves formed by the claws of his dog as it had scrambled up the declivity and the pad slipped on the clay.

As he had taken the upward path, no doubt it led direct to the pheasants, which was sure to be on the hill itself, or a dry and healthy slope.  I therefore took the other trail, since I must otherwise have overtaken him; for he would stay long among his chicks:  just as an old-fashioned farmer lingers at a gate, gazing on his sheep.  Advancing along the lower path, after some fifteen minutes it turned sharply to the right, and I stood under the precipitous cliff-like edge of the hill in a narrow coombe.  The earth