The Witness for the Defense | Page 2

stood the attack; and again it is possible to plead in
its favour with a good show of argument. But the attack, nevertheless,
brings into light another point of view.
Prudence, for instance, the disputant might urge, is all very well in the
ordinary run of life, but when the great moments come conduct wants
another inspiration. Such an one would consider that holiday with a
thought to spare for Stella Derrick, who during its passage saw much of
Henry Thresk. The actual hour when the test came happened on one of
the last days of August.
CHAPTER II
ON BIGNOR HILL
They were riding along the top of the South Downs between Singleton
and Arundel, and when they came to where the old Roman road from
Chichester climbs over Bignor Hill, Stella Derrick raised her hand and
halted. She was then nineteen and accounted lovely by others besides
Henry Thresk, who on this morning rode at her side. She was delicately
yet healthfully fashioned, with blue eyes under broad brows, raven hair
and a face pale and crystal-clear. But her lips were red and the colour
came easily into her cheeks.
She pointed downwards to the track slanting across the turf from the
brow of the hill.
"That's Stane Street. I promised to show it you."
"Yes," answered Thresk, taking his eyes slowly from her face. It was a

morning rich with sunlight, noisy with blackbirds, and she seemed to
him a necessary part of it. She was alive with it and gave rather than
took of its gold. For not even that finely chiselled nose of hers could
impart to her anything of the look of a statue.
"Yes. They went straight, didn't they, those old centurions?" he said.
He moved his horse and stood in the middle of the track looking across
a valley of forest and meadow to Halnaker Down, six miles away in the
southwest. Straight in the line of his eyes over a shoulder of the down
rose a tall fine spire--the spire of Chichester Cathedral, and farther on
he could see the water in Bosham Creek like a silver mirror, and the
Channel rippling silver beyond. He turned round. Beneath him lay the
blue dark weald of Sussex, and through it he imagined the hidden line
of the road driving straight as a ruler to London.
"No going about!" he said. "If a hill was in the way the road climbed
over it; if a marsh it was built through it."
They rode on slowly along the great whaleback of grass, winding in
and out amongst brambles and patches of yellow-flaming gorse. The
day was still even at this height; and when, far away, a field of long
grass under a stray wind bent from edge to edge with the swift motion
of running water, it took them both by surprise. And they met no one.
They seemed to ride in the morning of a new clean world. They rose
higher on to Duncton Down, and then the girl spoke.
"So this is your last day here."
He gazed about him out towards the sea, eastwards down the slope to
the dark trees of Arundel, backwards over the weald to the high ridge
of Blackdown.
"I shall look back upon it."
"Yes," she said. "It's a day to look back upon."
She ran over in her mind the days of this last month since he had come

to the inn at Great Beeding and friends of her family had written to her
parents of his coming. "It's the most perfect of all your days here. I am
glad. I want you to carry back with you good memories of our Sussex."
"I shall do that," said he, "but for another reason."
Stella pushed on a foot or two ahead of him.
"Well," she said, "no doubt the Temple will be stuffy."
"Nor was I thinking of the Temple."
"No?"
"No."
She rode on a little way whilst he followed. A great bee buzzed past
their heads and settled in the cup of a wild rose. In a copse beside them
a thrush shot into the air a quiverful of clear melody.
Stella spoke again, not looking at her companion, and in a low voice
and bravely with a sweet confusion of her blood.
"I am very glad to hear you say that, for I was afraid that I had let you
see more than I should have cared for you to see--unless you had been
anxious to see it too."
She waited for an answer, still keeping her distance just a foot or two
ahead, and the answer did not come. A vague terror began to possess
her that things which could never possibly be were actually happening
to her. She spoke again with a