A NIGHT OUT 153 



message from the meadowsweet, though here I 

 can also see the cream of the blossom. So, too, 

 the wayfaring tree whose blossoms are not merely 

 white, but almost luminous in the dark. But 

 there is nothing but the scent to disclose the 

 honeysuckle, and it comes from the depth of the 

 wood with an insistence that would almost persuade 

 a blind man that he could see. I have smelt the 

 delicious savour of field beans by night for nearly 

 a mile, and by day I have never managed to catch 

 it at more than five or six hundred yards. 



Stand still at midnight in the middle of wide 

 open country and listen to the silence. It is an 

 astonishing thing. The blackness is the black- 

 ness of velvet which absorbs sound as completely 

 as it absorbs light. That is not true though, for 

 in the midst of night tiny noises come a long way. 

 Once a chained dog gives tongue, and I know 

 from the direction that he is two miles away. It 

 is like a tiny ripple on the black pool of silence, 

 which immediately closes over it and makes it 

 as though it had not been. Then a kestrel some- 

 where turns in his sleep and says one querulous 

 word. The silence grows deeper than ever, to be 

 torn in shreds by the hoot of an owl close to my 

 ear. It is the most startling of all noises, and 

 the owl is said to use it for making a mouse jump 

 so as to disclose its whereabouts. The poor thing 

 must jump and fall dead. 



Going by the lake, where the unfailing scent 

 of water mint greets me, I hear a faint chatter 



