While he thus mused, walking swiftly, the day darkened about him, drawing the colour out of field and tree. The tides of the sky thickened, and set to a deep enamelled green, and a star came out above the tree-tops. Now and then he passed through currents of cool air that streamed out of the low wooded valleys, rich with the fragrance of copse and dingle. An owl fluted sweetly in a little holt, and was answered by another far up the hill. He heard in the breeze, now loud, now low, the far-off motions of the wheels of some cart rumbling blithely homewards. All else was still. At last he came out on the top of the wolds; the road stretched before him, a pale ribbon among dusky fields; and the lights of the distant village pierced through the darker gloom of sheltering trees. Hugh seemed that night to walk with his unknown friend close beside him, answering his hopes, stilling his vague discontents, with a pure and tender faithfulness that left him nothing to desire, but that the sweet nearness might not fail him. At such a moment, dear and wonderful as the world was, he felt that it held nothing so beautiful or so dear as that sweet companionship, and that if he had been bidden, in that instant, strong and content as he was, to enter the stream of death, a firm hand and a smiling face would have lifted him, as the stream grew shallower about him, safe and satisfied, up on the further side. XXVIII Democracy--Individualism--Corporateness--Materialism Among the most interesting of the new friends that Hugh made at Cambridge was a young Don who was understood to hold advanced socialistic views. What was more important from Hugh's point of view was that he was a singularly frank, accessible, and lively person, full of ideas and enthusiasms. Hugh was at one time a good deal in his company, and used to feel that the charm of conversation with him was, not that they discussed things, or argued, or had common interests, but that it was like setting a sluice open between two pools; their two minds, like moving waters, seemed to draw near, to intermingle, to linger in a subtle contact. His friend, Sheldon by name, was a great reader of books; but he read, Hugh thought, in the same way that he himself read, not that he might master subjects, annex and explore mental provinces, and classify the movement of thought, but rather that he might lean out into a misty haunted prospect, where mysterious groves concealed the windings of uncertain paths, and the turrets of guarded strongholds peered over the woodland. Hugh indeed guessed dimly that his friend had a whole range of interests of which he knew nothing, and this was confirmed by a conversation they had when they had walked one day together into the deep country. They took a road that seemed upon the map to lead to a secluded village, and then to lose itself among the fields, and soon came to the hamlet, a cluster of old-fashioned houses that stood very prettily on a low scarped gravel