ON THE DOWNS They went up by the steep chalk road which skirts the park wall to the top of the conical hill above the race-course.

An escarpment of grass banks guards a hollow like a shallow crater on the very summit.

They rode round it upon the rim, now facing the black slope of Charlton Forest across the valley to the north, now looking out over the plain and Chichester.

Thirty miles away above the sea the chalk cliffs of the Isle of Wight gleamed under their thatch of dark turf.

It was not yet nine in the morning.