ii2 THE DOWNS 



in your memory. Or, higher still, you are striding 

 over the short-clipped turf, picking your way through 

 piles of granite blocks and erratic boulders, your gun 

 swaying as a balancing pole, what eyes you have to 

 spare from your feet cast far ahead to catch the first 

 grey glint of the ptarmigan's pencilled wing. Or, 

 loftier yet, you have climbed the snow slopes of snow- 

 clad mountains, and are plunging over some col or joch 

 in the Alps, through some breche in the Pyrenees, 

 with glacier or desert born air winging your steps, 

 the promise of a fresh country, at least a new watershed 

 before you. On the downs your thoughts grow busy 

 enough, ranging about as free and uncertain as the 

 breezes, and were they monotonous, as they threatened 

 to be at first start, your walk would still be an enviable 

 one. 



But monotony ! why, they smile to you in the play 

 of light and the colours of fountains falling among 

 fireworks. Rich floods of sunshine would seem to 

 have dyed their short brown sward with a lasting 

 tinge of yellow. The dark shadows of the clouds fall 

 trembling and flickering over the sea of light that 

 comes rolling and surging over their slopes. Golden 

 you would call the light were it not for the dazzle 

 from the wheat stubbles hard by, where cultivation in 

 its autumn dress is more gorgeous than simple nature. 

 Not a breath of moisture is rising from the chalk and 

 sand to dim the limpid purity of the air or break 

 the sharp lines of the falling shadows. Like the swan 

 floating in still St. Mary's Loch, each southdown 



