“These experiences will form part of my life, a background, an escapement from civilisation when I return to it.  We must think a little of the future—­lay by a store like the bees”; and next morning he looked round, his eyes delighting in the beauty of the light.  Truly a light sent from beyond skies in which during the course of the day every shade of blue could be distinguished.  A thin, white cloud would appear towards evening, stretch like a skein of white silk across the sky, to gather as the day declined into one white cloud, which would disappear, little by little, into the sunset.  As Owen rode at the head of his cavalcade he watched this cloud, growing smaller, and its diminishing often inspired the thought of a ship entering into a harbour, sail dropping over sail.

The pale autumn weather continued day after day; everything in the landscape seemed fixed; and it seemed impossible to believe that very soon dark clouds would roll overhead, and wind tear the trees, and floods dangerous to man and horse rush down the peaceful river beds, now nearly dry, only a trickle of water, losing itself among sandy reaches.

During the long march of twenty days the caravan passed through almost every kind of scenery—­long plains in which there was nothing but reeds and tussocked grass, and these plains were succeeded by stony hills covered with scrub.  Again they caught sight of Arab fires in the morning like a mist, at night lighting up the horizon; and a few days afterwards they were riding through an oak forest whose interspaces were surprisingly like the tapestries at Riversdale, only no archer came forward to shoot the stag; and he listened vainly, for the sounds of hunting horns.

On debouching from the forest they passed through pleasantly watered valleys, the hillsides of which were cultivated.  It was pleasant to see fields again, though they were but meagre Arab fields.  All the same Owen was glad to see the blue shadows of the woods marking the edge of these fields, for they carried his thoughts back to England, to his own fields, and in his mood of mind every remembrance of England was agreeable.  He was beginning to weary of wild nature, so it was pleasant to see an Arab shepherd emerge from the scrub and come forward to watch for a moment and then go away to the edge of a ravine where his goats were browsing, and sit upon a rock, followed by a yellow dog with a pointed face like a fox.  It was pleasant, too, to discover the tents of the tribe at a little distance, and the next day to catch sight of a town, climbing a hill so steep that it was matter for wonderment how camels could be driven through the streets.