Her latest effort to detain me a day longer had been made and there was no more to say.
"Do you know," she said in a low mysterious voice, "that it is not safe to be alone at midnight on this long lonely road--the loneliest place in all Salisbury Plain ?" "The safest," I said.

"Safe as the Tower of London--the protectors of all England are there." "Ah, there's where the danger is!" she returned.

"If you meet some desperate man, a deserter with his rifle in his hand perhaps, do you think he would hesitate about knocking you over to save himself and at the same time get a little money to help him on his way ?" I smiled at her simulated anxiety for my safety, and set forth when it was very dark but under a fine starry sky.

The silence, too, was very profound: there was no good-bye from crowing cock or hooting owl on this occasion, nor did any cyclist pass me on the road with a flash of light from his lamp and a tinkle from his bell.

The long straight road on the high down was a dim grey band visible but a few yards before me, lying across the intense blackness of the earth.