There was a farmer driving as far as Adam’s Hole on the Hailsham Road, and he offered Mr. Sumption a lift in his trap. The minister had shod his little sorrel mare, and with her hoofs ringing on the clinkered road they drove from Lion’s Green, away towards the east. The dipping sun poured upon their backs, flooding the lane and washing along their shadows ahead of them into the swale. The east was still bright, and out of it crept the moon, frail and papery, like the petal of a March flower.

The little mare spanked quickly over the way on her new-shod hoofs. Through Soul Street and Horeham Flat, by Badbrooks and Coarse Horn on the lip of the Marsh rolled the trap, with the minister nearly silent and the farmer talking about the War—till the oasts of Adam’s Hole showed their red turrets against a wood, and, declining an invitation to step in and hear half a dozen more good reasons why the Germans would never get the Channel Ports, Mr. Sumption tramped off to where the East Road swung into the flats.

The sun was now low, and the sunk light touched the moon, so that her smudged arc kindled and shone out of the cold dimness. Red and yellow gleams wavered over the country of the Four Roads, sweeping up the meadows towards Three Cups Corner, and lighting the woods that [313] blotched the chimneys of Brownbread Street. He saw Sunday Street slitting the hill with a red gape, and the sheen of the ponds by Puddledock, and the flare of gorse and broom on Magham Down. There was a great clearness and cleanness in the watery air, so that he could see the roofs of farmsteads far away and little cottages standing alone like toadstools in the fields. Sounds came clearly, too—there was a great clucking on all the farms, and the lowing of cows; now and then the bark of a dog came sharply from a great way off, sheep called their lambs in the meadows by Harebeating, and a boy was singing reedily at Cowlease Farm....

It was all very still, very lovely, steeped through with t............