XIV.
The rustics watched our departure with interest, until a turning of the lane hid us from their view, and brought us again into the open country, a country-side scattered with small and inhospitable hamlets and villages, where Roman roads ran straight up and down hill, deserted and grass-grown, where apparently the tourist was an unknown quantity, where certainly his wants remain unsatisfied.
This night we “camped-out” as a matter of necessity. It was a fine night, and warm, and so there was not so much hardship in it, after all. Our resting-place was a haystack that loomed up black in front of us as we turned a bend of these lonely roads. We climbed over a field gate and selected a corner of the partly used stack, and fell to talking.
Presently, however, there came the near baying of a big dog, whereupon we rubbed our shins meditatively and climbed to a safer altitude. This was philosophic: we had hardly settled in this coign of vantage when we heard the dog snuffling below, and so to cool his questing we reached down some stones from the thatch and sent them into the darkness. We could hear him growling over them in a particularly horrid manner, and congratulated ourselves on our happy perch. But a lucky shot hit him, so he went yelping away, and afterwards all was peace.
It was at a very early hour the next morning we awoke, damp with early dews, uncomfortable, and dishevelled; covered in wildest confusion with fragments of hay, and altogether two most miserable-looking objects. The tramp who sleeps in summertime in haystacks and under hedges with never a change of clothes may possibly not feel any inconvenience for lack of the commonest toilet observances, but the first experience is to the tramp en amateur decidedly unpleasant, so far have we distanced our woad-stained ancestors of a remote Britain when Pears’ soap was undreamed of.
When by good fortune we came to one of the many streams that water this lonesome land we made our toilet, and presently, girded anew with self-respect, set forward in the direction of Romsey and breakfast.
It was still early when we regained the highway, and indeed throughout that day we never once arrived at familiar terms with time. Eight o’clock came, and wore the look of high noon; noonday seemed to herald the hour for tea; by five o’clock we awaited sundown; and at length, when night arrived, the backward vista to this early rising was achieved only by a mental effort, so lengthy was our day.