70 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



unpainted oak, and some few are of a kind not often seen 

 elsewhere, lower than a hurdle and composed of two 

 stout parallel bars united by twenty uprights and by two 

 pieces meeting to form a V across these. The gates 

 deserve and would fill a book by themselves. 



Green lucent calipers of flags shadow one another in 

 little wayside ponds, white-railed; for this is the Weald, 

 the land of small clay ponds. The hazels are the nightin- 

 gale's. In many of the oak woods the timber carriages 

 have carved a way through primroses and bluebells deep 

 into the brown clay. The larger views are of cloudy 

 oak woods, ridge behind ridge, and green corn or grass 

 and grey ploughland between; and of the sun pouring 

 a molten cataract out of dark machicolated clouds on to 

 one green field that glows a moment and is insignificant 

 again : the lesser are of little brambly precipitous sand- 

 pits by the road, of a white mill at a crossing, of carved 

 yews before black-timbered inns, of a starling that has 

 learned the curlew's call perched on a cottage roof, of 

 abeles all rough silver with opening leaf shivering along 

 the grass-bordered evening road, of two or three big oaks 

 in a meadow corner and in their shadow unblemished 

 parsley and grasses bowed as if rushing in the wind. At 

 an inn door stands a young labourer, tall and straight but 

 loosely ma3e, his nose even and small, his eyes blue and 

 deep set, his lips like those of Antinous, his face ruddy 

 and rough-grained, his hair short and brown and crisp upon 

 his fair round head; his neck bound by a voluminous 

 scarf (with alternate lozenges of crimson and deep green 

 divided by white lines) that is gathered beneath his chin 

 by a brass ring and thence flows down under his blue 



