I crept along towards this combe on foot, as though I were going bird's nesting. I beat along by the hedges, keeping out of sight behind them, till I was actually on the combe's north slope, climbing up to the old earthwork on the top. I took care to climb the slope at a place where there was no sentry, which was, of course, not only the steepest bit of the hill but covered with gorse clumps, through which I could scarcely thrust my way. Up towards the top the gorse was less plentiful; there were immense foxgloves, ferns, little marshy tufts where rushes grew, little spots of wet bright green moss. Yellow-hammers drawled their pretty tripping notes to me, not starting away, even when I passed close to them. All the beauty of June was on the earth that day; the beauty of everything in that intense blue haze was wonderful. The top of the combe was very steep, steeper than any of the ascent, because it had been built up like an outer wall by the savages who once lived there with their cattle. I could see just the bare steep wall of the rampart standing up in a dull green line of short-grassed turf against the sky, now burning with the intense blue of summer. One hard quick scramble, with my fingernails dug into the ground, brought my head to the top of the rampart, beyond which I could see nothing but great ferns, a forest of great ferns, already four or five feet high, stretching away below, into the cup of the camp or citadel. I did not dare to stand up, lest I should be seen. I burrowed my way among the ferns over the wall into the hollow, worming my way towards the edge of the fern clump so that I could see. In a minute, I was gazing through the fern-stems into the camp itself; it was a curious sight. About fifty people (some of them women) were sitting about a hollow in the ground, which I guessed to be a sort of smokeless fireplace or earth-oven. Everywhere else, all over the hollow of the camp, which must have been a full three hundred yards across, were various kinds of farm-stock, mostly cattle, though there were many picketed horses, too. At first I thought that I had climbed into a camp of gipsies, which gave me a scare; for gipsies then were a wild lot, whom wise folk avoided. Then, as I glanced about, I saw a sentry standing not thirty yards from me, but well above me, on the rampart top. He was no gipsy he was an ordinary farmer's lad, with the walk of a ploughman. His sleeves, which were rolled back, showed me a sun-burnt pair of arms, such as no gipsy ever had. What puzzled me about him was his heavy double-barrelled pistol, which he carried in his right hand, with something of a military cock, yet as though awed by it. He was not over sure of that same pistol. I could see that he confounded it in some way with art-magic.