I will never be taken alive!" Having cut, thus, the cable that bound me to civilisation, and having seen the buff pony and the dazed yokel disappear in a cloud of dust, I looked about me with what Stevenson calls a "fine, dizzy, muddle-headed joy," the joy of a successful rebel or a liberated serf.

Plenty of money in my purse--that was unromantic, of course, but it simplified matters--and nine hours of daylight remaining in which to find a lodging.
{Life converges there, just at the public duck-pond: p3.jpg} The village is one of the oldest, and I am sure it must be one of the quaintest, in England.

It is too small to be printed on the map (an honour that has spoiled more than one Arcadia), so pray do not look there, but just believe in it, and some day you may be rewarded by driving into it by chance, as I did, and feel the same Columbus thrill running, like an electric current, through your veins.

I withhold specific geographical information in order that you may not miss that Columbus thrill, which comes too seldom in a world of railroads.
The Green is in the very centre of Barbury village, and all civic, political, family, and social life converges there, just at the public duck-pond--a wee, sleepy lake with a slope of grass-covered stones by which the ducks descend for their swim.
The houses are set about the Green like those in a toy village.

They are of old brick, with crumpled, up-and-down roofs of deep-toned red, and tufts of stonecrop growing from the eaves.