Two miles away on the downs, another kind of haze caught the eye of Robert Formby as he strode across them, the golden glimmering haze which indicates intense heat; the sun had not yet set, but its rays struck the short herbage as though they must scorch it, and made the white streak of road which threaded the undulating tract positively glitter. But yonder was Oakleigh Wood, heavily green in its luxuriance of summer foliage. As Robert swung along, with the fierce sunshine beating on his brown neck and hands, he pictured it to himself: first, the grove of firs with all its spicy scents streaming forth at this hour, then the open space where the rabbits would presently frolic, then, stretching away, the wide dense coppice of hazel and oak and ash. He thought of the broad drives where the feet sank deep in cool lush grass, and of the narrow and more secret paths between serried green walls, where scarce a single burning ray might penetrate, though far, far away at the very end of a long vista, a peep of luminous sky was to be had. Robert dwelt on it all, not as a poet or an artist would have dwelt on it, revelling in its beauty, but as a man thinks of familiar and undeniably pleasant things. The young gamekeeper shifted his gun to the other shoulder to ease himself, and swung his now disengaged arm, whistling as he walked. Oakleigh Wood was situated on a Dorset down, but Robert Formby was a North-countryman. He had probably Danish blood in his veins, for his big, loose-limbed figure, his blue eyes and yellow hair and beard, would seem to belong to the race; his complexion, too, had been fair but was now bronzed, though when, impatient of the heat, he threw open the collar of his flannel shirt, the lower part of his throat showed white as milk. A very energetic, sensible, clear-headed fellow was Robert, full of zeal, and most laudably anxious to do his duty. It was this zealous anxiety which brought him to Oakleigh Wood on this particular occasion. It was just possible that evil-disposed persons might take advantage of the universal relaxation to trespass in these coverts; it behoved Robert to see to that, he conceived.