MEMORIES 123 



blackened all but the hardiest and most un- 

 palatable herbage, to which he was for the 

 most part now driven for support. He fed on 

 furze and lichens and no longer looked forward 

 to the joys of pasturing time. Instead, his 

 thoughts turned to the nights of plenty, to remem- 

 bered feasts on tender corn and sweet trefoil, to 

 banquets on fragrant thyme and juicy sow-thistles, 

 to titbits like the pinks, above all to the musk, 

 the tastiest morsel that his beats had furnished. 

 He never wearied of dwelling on the appetising 

 list ; he would rehearse it again and again, and 

 wonder whether the good things of the honey- 

 suckle time would ever come again. He quite 

 lost himself in these reveries ; the hissing of the 

 wind, even the ring of the horse's hoofs that 

 broke in on his musings as the farmer rode away 

 to market, failed to disturb them. 



He was trying to recall the flavour of dande- 

 lions as he dreamily watched man and horse 

 cross the lowland which seemed to shrink and 

 cower beneath the low-hanging sky. Clouds, 

 grey and depressing, spread from horizon to 

 horizon save in the south - west, where at 

 close of day after day the red sun emblazoned 

 the heaven, and for a brief while bathed 

 ocean and promontory with its cheery rays. 

 They were especially pleasing to the hare, com- 



