have now become merely a pleasing memory.

Pickets seem to crop up everywhere; on one bus ride to London, a
journey of twenty miles, I have been asked to show my pass three
times, and on a return journey by train I have had to produce the
written permit on five occasions. But some units of our divisions soar
above these petty inconveniences, as do two brothers who motor home
every Sunday when church parade comes to an end.

When these two leave church after divine service, a car waits them at
the nearest street corner, and they slip into it, don trilby hats and
civilian overcoats, and sweep outside the restricted area at a haste
that causes the slow-witted country policeman to puzzle over the speed
of the car and forget its number while groping for his pocket-book.

It has always been a pleasure to me to follow for hours the winding
country roads looking out for fresh scenes and new adventures. The
life of the roadside dwellers, the folk who live in little stone
houses and show two flower-pots and a birdcage in their windows, has
a strange fascination for me. When I took up my abode here and got my
first free Sunday afternoon, I shook military discipline aside for a
moment and set out on one of my rambles.

There comes a moment on a journey when something sweet, something
irresistible and charming as wine raised to thirsty lips, wells up in
the traveller's being. I have never striven to analyse this feeling or
study the moment when it comes, and that feeling has been often mine.
Now I know the moment it floods the soul of the traveller. It is at
the end of the second mile, when the limbs warm to their work and the
lungs fill with the fresh country air. At such a moment, when a man