Read "The Blanket of the Dark" by John Buchan online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Cotswold lay asleep in the October afternoon under a haze like the bloom on a plum. Long before the western rim of the uplands was reached Peter and Darking had entered the pale of Avelard. Its stone walls began before they passed the upper waters of Coln and came out on the high bleak tableland where all the tributaries of the young Thames have their source. It was now a country of pasture, with the short sweet bite for sheep, but here and there rank patches showed where there had once been ploughlands. There were no hamlets or farms, only shepherds' cabins, and the ruins of former habitations from which the walls of the pastures had been built. The sheep were small and shaggy to Peter's eye, accustomed to the heavier animals of the lowlands; the shepherds were wild- looking folk, with their swathes of rags for footgear and their long hazel crooks, and the dogs were savage and noisy.
"These are my lord's flocks," said Darking. "He has been a great pasture-maker, and most of his wealth comes from these dirty hides."