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steed,
     And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean, and sing
     A faery's song.
    —John Keats, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci"
     
     
    The storm clouds had scattered away northward, and Appleton folded down the accordionlike calash roof of his carriage so that as they drove they could bake the "drink-poisons" out of their systems in the summer sun; but most of the roads between Warnham and the sea proved to be very narrow, walled on either side with stones heaped up centuries ago by farmers clearing the moors, and to Crawford it several times felt as if they were driving through some sunken antediluvian corridor.
    Ancient oaks spread branches across the sky overhead, seeming to strive to provide the corridor's missing roof, and though Appleton's hired driver cursed when the carriage was slowed for a while by a tightly packed flock of two dozen sheep being languidly goaded along by a collie and a white-bearded old man, Crawford was glad of their company—the landscape had been getting too close-pressing and inanimate.
    At about noon they stopped at a tavern in Worthing, and on a chestnut-shaded terrace overlooking the glittering expanse of the English Channel they restored themselves with several pitchers of bitter ale, and a dozen pickles, and three vast beef-and-gravy pastries with each man's initials stamped into the crust so that they could keep straight which was whose when they unwrapped the uneaten ends later in the day.
    Eventually Crawford pushed his plate away, refilled his glass, and then squinted belligerently at his companions. "I lost the ring," he said. The sea breeze blew his brown hair back from his forehead, letting the sun catch the gray hairs at his temples in the moments when he wasn't shaded by the waving branches or the seagulls sailing noisily back and forth over the shore slope.
    Appleton blinked at him. "The ring," he echoed blankly.
    "The goddamn
wedding
ring, the one Jack's supposed to hand to me tonight—I lost it last night, when we were larking about in the back yard of that inn."
    Jack Boyd shook his head. "Christ, I'm sorry, Mike, that was my fault, going crazy the way I did—I got no business drinking so much. I'll buy you a new one somehow—"
    "No, I'm to blame," interrupted Appleton with a smile which, though rueful, was his first genuine one of the day. "I was soberer than you two, but I got scared of the dark and ran out on you—hell, Michael, I even saw you take the ring out of the pocket of your coat, after you'd draped the coat over the barmaid who was getting chilled, and I knew it was risky, but I was in such a sweat to get back inside that I didn't want to bring it up. I insist you let me pay for it."
    Crawford stood up and drank off the last of his ale. Even now his face had not lost quite all of the deep-bitten tan acquired in shipboard life, and when he smiled he looked vaguely foreign, like some kind of American or Australian. "No no, I'm the one that lost it—and anyway I've already bought a replacement from the landlord back there. It cost me half my travelling money, but I think it'll do." He held out a ring on the palm of his hand for them to look at.
    Appleton had at last regained his usual manner. "Well, yes," he said judiciously, "these southern rustics will probably never have seen
real
gold . . . or any kind of metal, conceivably. Yes, you ought to be all right with that. What's the name of the place again? Undercut-by-the-sea?"
    Crawford opened his mouth to remind him that it was called Bexhill-on-Sea, but, now that at least a tenuous sort of cheer had been restored, he didn't want to seem stuffy. "Something like that," he said dryly as they wrapped up the leftovers and started back toward where the hired driver waited by the carriage.
    The roads were open now, with the sea generally visible to their left as the carriage rocked along past the stone jetties of Brighton and Hove—Boyd made deprecatory remarks about the little boats