A Secret of the Hills. 23 



Beyond the village the road enters the ravine, whose 

 steep sides are covered thick with furze and bracken, 

 through which bold crags of limestone, rough with 

 rowan and wayfaring-tree, raise their rugged heads. 



Along one side of the valley rises a wall of cliff, re- 

 lieved by the dark foliage of stunted yews that have 

 twisted their tough roots into the crevices, or by the 

 now leafless branches of the white beam, on which 

 linger still a few clusters of fruit that have escaped the 

 keen eyes of the daws that nest among the ledges. 

 Here, too, the bold kestrel finds a safe retreat, and 

 from her eyrie in the windy steep looks down upon 

 the few signs of life that stir below. 



It is indeed a quiet spot. Few sounds disturb the 

 stillness beyond the scream of a hawk, the cry of a 

 solitary ouzel, or the chatter of a troop of daws. 



It is hard to realize how brief a time has passed 

 since this solitary glen was a scene of life and busy 

 movement. - But over the crest of the cliff the ground 

 is seamed and broken with the old workings of the 

 miners — of the men who 



'poured to war from Mendip's sunless caves.' 



It is not long, reckoning by years, since Nature drew 

 her green veil over the heaps of refuse ; but the in- 

 dustry that barely half a century ago employed the 

 country side is now no more than a tradition. 



Among the hills there linger older memories than 

 these. The rabbits that burrow under the smooth 



