Presently one by one the three
visitors got up and, remarking that it was time to be going, they took
their departure.
The old man could not escape nor avoid listening, and in the end had to
say something. He said he didn't know nothing about all them tramps and
gipsies and other sorts of men who had sat by the tree; all he knowed
was that the old thorn had been a good thorn to him--first and last. He
remembered once when he was a young man, not yet twenty, he went to do
some work at a village five miles away, and being winter time he left
early, about four o'clock, to walk home over the downs. He had just got
married, and had promised his wife to be home for tea at six o'clock.
But a thick fog came up over the downs, and soon as it got dark he lost
himself. 'Twas the darkest, thickest night he had ever been out in; and
whenever he came against a bank or other obstruction he would get down
on his hands and knees and feel it up and down to get its shape and find
out what it was, for he knew all the marks on his native downs; 'twas
all in vain--nothing could he recognise. In this way he wandered about
for hours, and was in despair of getting home that night, when all at
once there came a sense of relief, a feeling that it was all right, that
something was guiding him.
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