It was springtime in England! Springtime in Surrey, and the High Road south from Guildford to Anglesgreen was aflutter with the stirrings of butterflies. Young birds flitted and swooped, or sat and chirped at their good fortune to be young, alive, and English. Bees buzzed, and if one listened hard enough, one could hear green buds and tender shoots sigh with delight in the somewhat warm wind.

Two young men rode along the verge of the roadway to avoid the muddy spatters and deep ruts carved by winter traffic, and the creaking wagons and wains of the local farmers, the occasional flock of sheep being moved from one grazing to another.

One young fellow was a countryman, towheaded and sinewy on a middling hired mare, leading a pack horse upon which were strapped a few traveling bags of cylindrical leather, or pouchlike carpet material. He was dressed in a sailor's slop-trousers, shirt and neckerchief, with a low-crowned, flat-brimmed hat of black-tarred straw on the back of his head, and he gazed with a rustic's fondness on the verdant green countryside, recognizing merit and worth in well-tended flocks and fields, of trimmed hedgerows and woods.

The other was revealed a gentleman by his better horse, by the fineness of his buff-colored breeches and waistcoat, the newness of his plum-colored coat and dark beaver cocked hat, and the sheen of his top boots. This young gentleman snared the attention of passing travelers, and the interest of the farm-girls, whose sap was stirring after a long, miserable winter. There he found merit and worth!