There we shed our few garments on the bank, and the moments that followed, from the first exultant thrill as the water effervesced over our bodies till we crawled out dripping to dry in the wind and sun, seemed to hold only gratitude--an immense undefined gratitude to the Power that held all life. At its heels came hunger, wonderfully well defined. Lower down, where the road that stretches like a white ribbon over the bosom of the moor crosses the river, there is an inn. I will not name it: writers of poems and guide-books--worthier penmen all--have done that. Besides, quite enough people go there as it is. We dropped, via a kine-scented yard and over a seven-foot bank, into the road abreast the inn door, and here a brake, freighted with tourist folk, brought us suddenly back to the conventions that everyday life demands. True, we were never fain to cling to these; but, standing there on the King's high-road, clad in football knickers and thin jerseys, sun-burnt and dishevelled, we were conscious of a sudden immense embarrassment. And, in sooth, had we dropped from the skies or been escaping from the grey prison not far distant, the tenants of the brake could hardly have been less merciful in their scrutiny or comments. After the clean wind of the moor, the taint of the last meal and over-clad fellow-beings seemed to cling unpleasantly to the low-ceilinged room whither we fled, and I do not think we breathed comfortably again till we had paid our bill and returned to the sunlight. Before leaving we inquired the time, and learned it was nearly four o'clock. One ought to "know the time," it seems, among men's haunts; but, once out of sight of these, it suffices, surely, to eat when hungry, sleep when tired, roam as long as daylight and legs will let one--in fine, to share with the shaggy ponies and browsing sheep a lofty disregard for all artificial divisions of the earth's journey through space. And our joint watch happened at the time to be undergoing repairs in Plymouth. To follow the ramifications of a road gives one no lasting impression of the surrounding country, but directly a wanderer has to depend on landmarks as a guide, all his powers of observation quicken. One ragged hill-top guided us to another, across valleys scored with the workings of forgotten tin-mines. A brook, crooning its queer, independent moor-song between banks of peat, rambled beside us for some time. Then, as if wearying of our company, it turned abruptly and was lost to view; in the summer stillness of late afternoon we heard it babbling on long after our ways separated.