A wood-pigeon came sloping down from the far sky with fewer and fewer wing strokes and longer and longer glidings upon half-closed wings as it drew near its home tree. It disappeared; another flew in sight and slanted downward with the same “folding-in” motion; and then another. The air was silent and still, the road was empty. The birds coming home to the quiet earth seemed visitors from another world. They seemed to bring something out of the sky down to this world, and the house and garden where I stayed at last were full of this something. I heard rooks among the tall beeches of just such a house as I knew I ought to have been able to imagine, with the help of the long white road and the gentle hills, the tall trees, the rooks, and the evening. There were flowers and lawns, beeches and sycamores, belonging to three centuries, perhaps more, and stately but plain red brick of the same date, and likely to endure for a yet longer period, if not by its own soundness, then by its hold upon the fantasy of men who build nothing like it. CHAPTER V THIRD DAY--ODSEY TO EDLESBOROUGH, BY BALDOCK, LETCHWORTH, ICKLEFORD, LEAGRAVE, AND DUNSTABLE The rooks had been talking in my sleep much too long before I started next day. Their voices and the blazing window-blind described the morning for me before I stirred. I could see and feel it all; and if I could write it down as I saw and felt it this would be a good book and no mistake. The long grasses were dewy cool, the trees lightly rustling and full of shadow, the sky of so soft a greyness that it seemed an impossible palace for a sun so gorgeous. The thrushes sang, and seeing a perfect crimson strawberry, I picked it, and found that it was as hot as a strawberry can be, and therefore at its sweetest and richest. [Illustration: Deadman’s Lane, Baldock.]