220 MY DEVON YEAR 



fern, its circumference stretched out dead in the 

 gloaming ; stillness deeper than sleep stagnated over 

 it ; one naked thorn, humped into semblance of 

 uncouth life, kept his vigil in the midst ; and round 

 about extended two great rings, clothed with rack 

 and chaos of a winter heath, splashed with pale 

 tussocks of grass, like blind eyes, swept with fallen 

 fern, whose nerveless stems had bent and broken in 

 regiments under the shattering pressure of past 

 storms. Thus sprawled out starkly under an ashy 

 light, that each moment sucked the detail from it, 

 this old camp lay before me ; and such was the 

 silence that not one sob, whisper, or tinkle inhabited 

 the dead bells of the heather. They, too, were 

 dumb ; and I mused as to how many million would 

 echo the wind no more ; I thought of the hosts 

 among them destined to fall that night in the pinch 

 of the frost. 



Motion and sound were here suspended, for the 

 place was as a picture painted in colours of 

 mourning upon the past. Not one spark of living 

 light shone from out the monochrome of it ; not one 

 sentinel challenged the ineffable peace. Yesterday, 

 the Legions had made these earthworks tremble ; 

 to-day, they who once laboured here were dust again, 

 though the crown on the hill, with greater things, still 

 endured to testify of them. 



One star suddenly twinkled a very incarnation of 

 life and activity contrasted with this brooding deso- 



