Testimonies: A Novel by Patrick O'Brian Read Free Book Online Page B

merged the shore was black and there were rushes: the stream ran cutting deep between banks of a spongy black substance, and in some places I could hear the sound of invisible tributaries that ran underground. On the shore itself the firm black mud showed a line of footprints; they looked to me like those of a dog, but a fox was more likely. It struck me again, and more forcibly, that a man can be ignorant of an infinite number of important, everyday things and still be reckoned educated. In this instance I could not distinguish between the tracks of a dog and a fox; it was not important, perhaps, but it was typical: I had not known the name of that melancholy bird, nor the curious plants that stood in the bog-pool before me—I did not know their names, still less their qualities. A hundred other cases presented themselves—the milking of a cow, the difference between a bull and a bullock, the lighting of a fire without kerosene—none perhaps a matter of life and death, but in all amounting to a great shameful fog of ignorance.
    These reflections occupied me until I was halfway round the other side of the lake, and there, where I had to negotiate a difficult piece of smooth rock overhanging the water, something prompted me to look up to the top of the black cliff: it was still there, its aspect slightly changed by my change in position, but surely motionless, and a rock without any sort of doubt. This was comforting, I hardly know why, and I crossed the rock and finished my tour of the lake in much higher spirits. When I sat down to my sandwiches I felt positively merry—a glance upwards showed it there, of course, an insignificant rock, though curious. When I had finished my sandwiches it was gone.
    I left the tarn with a mind disturbed, more disturbed than I should have believed possible, and turned at the black cleft into our own valley with a feeling of escape and strong relief. The sun was low now, and the shadow was halfway up the Penmawr ridge; the light was much more golden than I remembered to have seen it before—the contrast, perhaps, between the dark, closed country that I had just left and this wide, beautiful valley with the tawny flank of Penmawr on the other side throwing back a flood of light. There were the white spots of sheep, and down at the bottom the squared fields and the farms with their domestic trees: I had thought of it as wild and barren before, but now, at least for the moment, it looked almost homely.
    I went down the green path as slowly as I had come up it; a continual downhill walk that threatens every moment to break into an involuntary run is as tiring as a climb: the sun had left the top of the mountain long before I was halfway down. There was no reason to hurry; the long twilight was as soft as midsummer, and as I went down the length of the mountain wall the stones gave out a gentle warmth. I sat on the bridge for a long while before starting my climb home. The farm was asleep when I passed, walking softly through the yard; only one dog barked, and that perfunctorily—they were getting used to me.
    The last steep stretch was very tiring; I had gone too far for one day, and three times on the path up from the farm I stopped to breathe. The third time was just at the corner before my own wall, by the telegraph post: I leaned against it, listening to the singing in the wires, with the gentle breeze on my face and the faint stars showing above the ridge. On the white road, above the cattle-trap, two dogs came trotting toward Hafod. Whose dogs could those be? I thought, and I saw that they were not dogs; they were foxes. They came on steadily; from the road they looked over the low wall into my garden, twice. For a little while they were hidden by the cottage and when they appeared again they were just above me—I could have lobbed a stone underhand beyond them. One was larger than the other—a dog fox and a vixen, I supposed. Astonishing, the length of their legs, the height they