The church bells chimed the hour, and I turned over and went to
sleep.
On the Brighton Road
Slowly the sun had climbed up the hard white downs, till it broke
with little of the mysterious ritual of dawn upon a sparkling world
of snow. There had been a hard frost during the night, and the birds,
who hopped about here and there with scant tolerance of life, left no
trace of their passage on the silver pavements. In places the
sheltered caverns of the hedges broke the monotony of the whiteness
that had fallen upon the coloured earth, and overhead the sky melted
from orange to deep blue, from deep blue to a blue so pale that it
suggested a thin paper screen rather than illimitable space. Across
the level fields there came a cold, silent wind which blew a fine
dust of snow from the trees, but hardly stirred the crested hedges.
Once above the skyline, the sun seemed to climb more quickly, and as
it rose higher it began to give out a heat that blended with the
keenness of the wind.
It may have been this strange alternation of heat and cold that
disturbed the tramp in his dreams, for he struggled tor a moment with
the snow that covered him, like a man who finds himself twisted
uncomfortably in the bed-clothes, and then sat up with staring,
questioning eyes. "Lord! I thought I was in bed," he said to himself
as he took in the vacant landscape, "and all the while I was out
here." He stretched his limbs, and, rising carefully to his feet,
shook the snow off his body.
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