For the first hour or two, as no one would be about so early, I thought it safe to use the road. I put my best foot foremost, going up the great steep combe, with Chard at my back. The road was one of the loneliest I have ever trodden. It went winding up among barren-looking combes which seemed little better than waste land. There were few houses, so few that sometimes, on a bit of rising ground, when the road lifted clear of the hedges, one had to look about to see any dwelling of men. There was little cultivation, either. It was nearly all waste, or scanty pasture. A few cows cropped by the wayside near the lonely cottages. A few sheep wandered among the ferns. It was a very desolate land to lie within so few miles of England's richest valleys. I walked through it hurriedly, for I wished to get far from my prison before my escape was discovered. No one was there to see me; the lie of the valley below gave me my direction, roughly, but closely enough. After about an hour of steady, fairly good walking, I pulled up by a little tiny brook for breakfast. I ate quickly, then hurried on, for I dared not waste time. I turned out of the narrow cart-tracks into what seemed to be a highroad. I dipped down a hollow, past a pond where geese were feeding, then turned to a stiff steep hill, which never seemed to end for miles. The country grew lonelier at every step; there were no houses there; only a few rabbits tamely playing in the outskirts of the coverts. A jay screamed in the clump of trees at the hill-top; it seemed the proper kind of voice for a waste like that. Still further on, I sat down to rest at the brink of the great descent, which led, as I guessed, as I could almost see, to the plain where Taunton lay, waiting for the Duke's army to garrison her. There were thick woods to my right at this point, making cover so dense that no hounds would have tried to break through it, no matter how strong a scent might lead them. It was here, as I sat for a few minutes to rest, that a strange thing happened.