The man walked with a loose, swinging gait. His figure was spare and
angular: he wore a battered, black felt hat and clumsy, iron-bound
boots: his clothes were dingy from long exposure to the weather. He had
close-set, insignificant eyes, much wrinkled, and stubbly eyebrows
streaked with grey. His mouth was close-shaven, and drawn by his
abstraction into hard and taciturn lines; beneath his chin bristled an
unkempt fringe of sandy-coloured hair.
When he reached the foot of the fell, the twilight was already blurring
the distance. The sheep scurried, with a noisy rustling, across a flat,
swampy stretch, over-grown with rushes, while the dogs headed them
towards a gap in a low, ragged wall built of loosely-heaped boulders.
The man swung the gate to after them, and waited, whistling
peremptorily, recalling the dogs. A moment later, the animals
reappeared, cringing as they crawled through the bars of the gate. He
kicked out at them contemptuously, and mounting a stone stile a few
yards further up the road, dropped into a narrow lane.
Presently, as he passed a row of lighted windows, he heard a voice call
to him.
Pages:
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76