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ly forlorn. On the crown of the knoll where the oaks had
stood, now was bareness; and from there you could look out
over the trees to the colliery railway, and the new works at
Stacks Gate. Connie had stood and looked, it was a breach
in the pure seclusion of the wood. It let in the world. But she
didn’t tell Clifford.
This denuded place always made Clifford curiously an-
gry. He had been through the war, had seen what it meant.
But he didn’t get really angry till he saw this bare hill. He
was having it replanted. But it made him hate Sir Geoffrey.
Clifford sat with a fixed face as the chair slowly mounted.
When they came to the top of the rise he stopped; he would
not risk the long and very jolty down-slope. He sat looking
at the greenish sweep of the riding downwards, a clear way
through the bracken and oaks. It swerved at the bottom of
the hill and disappeared; but it had such a lovely easy curve,
of knights riding and ladies on palfreys.
’I consider this is really the heart of England,’ said Clifford
to Connie, as he sat there in the dim February sunshine.
’Do you?’ she said, seating herself in her blue knitted
dress, on a stump by the path.
’I do! this is the old England, the heart of it; and I intend
to keep it intact.’
’Oh yes!’ said Connie. But, as she said it she heard the
eleven-o’clock hooters at Stacks Gate colliery. Clifford was
too used to the sound to notice.
’I want this wood perfect...untouched. I want nobody to
trespass in it,’ said Clifford.
There was a certain pathos. The wood still had some of