The air had the queer, rooty smell of bogs, but it was as fresh as mid-ocean, and it had the strangest effect on my spirits.
I actually felt light-hearted.

I might have been a boy out for a spring holiday tramp, instead of a man of thirty-seven very much wanted by the police.

I felt just as I used to feel when I was starting for a big trek on a frosty morning on the high veld.

If you believe me, I swung along that road whistling.

There was no plan of campaign in my head, only just to go on and on in this blessed, honest-smelling hill country, for every mile put me in better humour with myself.
In a roadside planting I cut a walking-stick of hazel, and presently struck off the highway up a bypath which followed the glen of a brawling stream.