ERNIE 



MY Devon hermitage is only a sixteenth- 

 century cottage rented at four pounds a 

 year. There are two bedrooms, very small 

 and lime-washed, and a living room with a 

 stone floor and open hearth. A simple 

 place, built of cob, and thatched, with a 

 walled -in garden before it, and then the 

 village street. The churchyard with its 

 elm-rookery is on one side, a small brook 

 below the wall. Even in the hot summer the 

 water runs ; I have made a pool of stones 

 where the swallows and martins can go for 

 the mud to build their homes. Beautiful it 

 is to see, in the shadow of the trees, these 

 birds alighting softly on a boulder, or by 

 the pool's edge, and shovelling the red 

 mortar on their beaks. They are timid, 

 restless things, rising into the air at the 



least noise. I have passed many hours in 

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