CHAPTER V 



SUSSEX 



A FEW miles south of that great presiding pollard 

 beech is the boundary line between Surrey and Kent on 

 the north and Sussex on the south. A few miles over 

 the line the moorland organ roll of heather and birch and 

 pine succeeds the grassy undulations and the well-grown 

 beech and oak. The yellow roving lines of the paths cut 

 through the heather into the sand add to the wildness of the 

 waste, by their suggestion of mountain torrents and of chan- 

 nels worn in the soft rock or clay by the sea. The same 

 likeness in little is often to be seen upon a high-pitched 

 roof of thatch when the straw is earth-coloured and 

 tunnelled by birds and seamed by rain. Here the houses 

 are of stone, unadorned, heather-thatched. The maker 

 of birch-heath brooms plies his trade. There are stacks 

 of heath and gorse in the yard. All the more fair are 

 the grooves in the moorland, below the region of pines, 

 where the tiled white-boarded mill stands by the sheen 

 of a ford, and the gorse is bright and white clothes are 

 blowing over neat gardens and the first rose. On a day 

 of rain and gloom the answer of the gorse to sudden 

 lights and heats is delicious; all those dull grey and 

 glaucous and brown dry spines bursting into cool and 

 fragrant fire is as great a miracle as the turning of flames 

 to roses round a martyr's feet. 



It is only too easy for the pheasant lords to plant larch 

 in parallelograms : to escape from them it is necessary to 



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