SPRING 53 



With the crescent goes the road, half-way up the sides 

 of the hills but nearly always at the foot of the steepest 

 slopes where the chalk-pits are carved white, like the con- 

 cave of a scallop shell, out of the green turf. Luxuriant 

 hedges bar the view except at gateways and stiles. At 

 one place the upper hedge gives way to scattered thickets 

 scrambling up the hill, with chalky ruts and rabbit work- 

 ings between. Neither sheep nor crops cover the hill, 

 nor yet is it common. Any one can possess it for an 

 hour. It is given up to the rabbits until Londoners can 

 be persuaded to build houses on it. At intervals a road 

 as old as the Way itself descends precipitously in a deep 

 chalk groove, overhung by yew and beech, or hornbeam, 

 or oak, and white clouds drifting in a river of blue sky 

 between the trees; and joins farther south the main road 

 which winds, parallel with the Pilgrims' Way and usually 

 south of it, from Winchester, through Guildford, Dork- 

 ing, Westerham, Maidstone, Ashford, and Canterbury to 

 Dover Strait. Not only chalk-pits and deep roads hollow 

 the hills. For miles there is a succession of small smooth 

 coombes, some grown with white thorn, some grassy, 

 above the road, alternating with corresponding smooth 

 breasts of turf. Towers and spires, but chiefly towers, lie 

 beneath, and in the mile or so between one and the next 

 there are red farms or, very rarely, a greater house at the 

 end of a long wave of grass among trees. Above, the 

 white full-bosomed clouds lean upon the green rampart 

 of the hills and look across to the orchards, the woods be- 

 yond, the oaken Weald and its lesser ridges still farther, 

 and then the South Downs and a dream of the south sea. 



Rain falls, and in upright grey sheaves passes slowly 



