BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK. 



look across the tiny hedgerow and homestead 

 anatomy of the nearer counties, away to England 

 in the distant haze, was to taste suddenly the 

 core of many trite sayings about human effort 

 and insignificance, and in spite of triteness the 

 great expanse, sown with silent life, was wonder- 

 ful beyond the symmetry of mountain-peaks. 



Many things were revealed to us on the way 

 down that had been withheld by the mist and 

 twilight of the ascent. Ravines into whose purple 

 shadows the sun had not yet looked — green valleys, 

 with little lakes lurking in them — white paths 

 straggling away to every point of the compass — 

 and pre-eminent and ubiquitous, the soda-water 

 bottle, the sandwich-paper, and the orange-peel. 

 It was still October when we started, but now as 

 we scrambled, slid, and ran with brief, uninten- 

 tional abandonment down the path, we were 

 travelling back along the gamut of the months. 

 By the time we had arrived at the first halting- 

 place of the night before, our own temperatures 

 had touched a point that made us independent 



