THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS
an overgrown garden. Then I was among young hay, and very soon had come to the edge of a plantation of windblown firs. From there I saw the chimneys of the house smoking a few hundred yards to my left. I forsook the burnside, crossed another dike, and almost before I knew was on a rough lawn. A glance back told me that I was well out of sight of the pursuit, which had not yet passed the first lift of the moor.
The lawn was a very rough place, cut with a scythe instead of a mower, and planted with beds of scrubby rhododendrons. A brace of blackgame, which are not usually garden birds, rose at my approach. The house before me was the ordinary moorland farm, with a more pretentious white-washed wing added. Attached to this wing was a glass verandah, and through the glass I saw the face of an elderly gentleman meekly watching me.
I stalked over the border of coarse hill gravel and entered the verandah door. Within was a pleasant room, glass on one side, and on the other a mass of books. More
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