He laughed at the idea. His leg could bear his whole weight to-day without a twinge. Retracing his steps down the passage, he entered the garden and left the place by the wicket-gate and struck up the winding lanes and across fields to the high road, his stick and bundle over his shoulder. By doing so, instead of taking the road at the end of the village, he could cut off a mile. It was a morning of freshness and inspiration. A cool breeze sent the clouds scurrying across the sky and rustled the leaves of the elms and rippled the surface of the half-grown corn. His spirits rose as he walked, somewhat of a jog-trot walk, it is true, but that would last for the rest of his life; so long as the pain had gone for ever, all was well. He reached the high road and settled down to his tramp, gladdened by the sight of cart and car and cottage gardens flaming with roses and hollyhocks or restful with screens of sweet-peas. In the soft-mannered West-country fashion, folks gave him “good day” as he passed. The road undulated pleasantly, now and then sweeping round the full bosom of a hill, with a steeply sloping drop of thirty feet to the valley. Such spots were grimly sign-posted for motorists; for at one of them, so Mrs. Pettiland had told him, a motor-lorry during the war had slipped over at night and all the occupants had been killed. He regarded it with a chauffeur’s eye and smiled contemptuously at the inefficiency of the driver. He could race along it at sixty miles an hour. But still, if you did go over—there was an end of you. By noon he was hungry and ate cold meat and bread at a wayside inn, and smoked contentedly afterwards on the bench outside and talked of crops and licensing laws with the landlord. When he started again he felt stiff from the unaccustomed exercise. Walking would relax his muscles. Yet he began to tire. A while later he came upon a furniture removing van which had broken down. Two men drew their heads from below the bonnet and looked at each other ruefully, and their speech was profane. He asked what was wrong. They didn’t know. He threw off his coat, glad to get to an engine again, and in a quarter of an hour had set it going merrily. For two or three miles he sat on the tailboard between the two canvas-aproned packers, enjoying the respite. When they turned off eventually from the main road, and he had to descend, he felt strangely disinclined to walk. The Junction was still a long way off. It would have been better, after all, to wait for the evening train from Fanstead. He was always starting on crazy ventures without counting the cost. But he limped on.