Once out of the house, however⁠—once clear of the bare raked-over flowerbeds, beds whose patches of yellow crocuses and jonquil-buds seemed shrinking back into the earth under that biting wind⁠—he threw those feelings from him and took the shortest way to the Blacksod road! This led him past the churchyard and the vicarage-gate; and he scarcely knew whether his jarred nerves sympathized more vibrantly with the frostbitten population under the grass, or with the obsessed little priest drinking his brandy amid all the trash in that desolate study!

When he got clear of the village, he struck westward across the fields, so as to hit the upper road; and it was not till he reached Babylon Hill that he paused to take breath. There he decided to skirt the edge of Poll’s Camp and avoid the more familiar descent into the town.