A SECRET OF THE HILLS. 



A COUNTRY lane, a rough and narrow way that 

 wanders between high banks overgrown with 

 briar and woodbine, whose opening buds give promise 

 of returning spring, leads up to a ravine that runs into 

 the heart of Mendip. High above the road meet the 

 arms of stately elms that, held in close embrace by 

 clinging ivy, wear a wealth of borrowed foliage that 

 might suit the summer. Green and fair, too, are the 

 ferns that fill the fissures in their rifted stems. About 

 their knotted roots the snowdrops are already peering 

 through the brown beds of leaves that the winds have 

 heaped under the hedgerow. 



Half hidden by the orchards farther on, where 

 among. the grey branches the oxeye sounds at intervals 

 his ringing call, are the houses of a little hamlet, nest- 

 ling close under the steep sides of the hollow. Their 

 rugged walls, with quaint gable windows deep set 

 under frowning brows of thatch, were old when news 

 of the Armada passed along these hills. 



