"He was a first-class shot," said Fisher. He had turned his back
abruptly and was walking down a narrow, grassy lane, little more
than a cart track, which lay opposite the inn and marked the end of
the great estate and the beginning of the open moors. March plodded
after him with the same idle perseverance, and found him staring
through a gap in giant weeds and thorns at the flat face of a
painted paling. From behind the paling rose the great gray columns
of a row of poplars, which filled the heavens above them with
dark-green shadow and shook faintly in a wind which had sunk slowly
into a breeze. The afternoon was already deepening into evening, and
the titanic shadows of the poplars lengthened over a third of the
landscape.
"Are you a first-class criminal?" asked Fisher, in a friendly tone.
"I'm afraid I'm not. But I think I can manage to be a sort of
fourth-rate burglar."
And before his companion could reply he had managed to swing himself
up and over the fence; March followed without much bodily effort,
but with considerable mental disturbance. The poplars grew so close
against the fence that they had some difficulty in slipping past
them, and beyond the poplars they could see only a high hedge of
laurel, green and lustrous in the level sun.
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