The lane passing out from the farm bisects the central compound. The hands' kitchen and service stalls mark the west, as you know, adjacent several cottages and a transients' barracks.
Equipment sheds stand across, with that steading upslope we call the Crease, and the stock pens beyond. As the mercenary trekked down toward the gate, a huddle of gawkers tracked him with their gaze, arrested by his appearance and his kit. This following was comprised not alone of lads but of maids and even husbandmen and dames breaking off at their labors. As he approached the gate, two boys dashed ahead, that he not be put to trouble by the latch, and would have trailed him a distance down the lane, or to the sea itself, had not their fathers hailed them back.
I, too, was held by this apparition, unable to turn apart until he had vanished along the avenue of holm oak, whose blossom yields that scarlet dye which ever colors the soldier's cloak of war.