You must stay in the patch, and let your enemies search it and not find you.

That was good sense, but how on earth was I to escape notice in that table-cloth of a place?
I would have buried myself to the neck in mud or lain below water or climbed the tallest tree.

But there was not a stick of wood, the bog-holes were little puddles, the stream was a slender trickle.

There was nothing but short heather, and bare hill bent, and the white highway.
Then in a tiny bight of road, beside a heap of stones, I found the roadman.
He had just arrived, and was wearily flinging down his hammer.

He looked at me with a fishy eye and yawned.
'Confoond the day I ever left the herdin'!' he said, as if to the world at large.