1 84 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



multitudes under the grey mist, perfectly still though a 

 wind flutters the high tops of the beech, has an immortal 

 beauty, and that they should ever change does not enter 

 the mind which is thus for the moment lured happily into 

 a strange confidence and ease. But the sun gains power 

 in the south-east. It changes the mist into a fleeting 

 garment, not of cold or of warm grey, but of diaphanous 

 gold. There is a sea-like moan of wind in the half-visible 

 trees, a wavering of the mist to and fro until it is dis- 

 persed far and wide as part of the very light, of the blue 

 shade, of the colour of cloud and wood and down. As 

 the mist is unwoven the ghostly moon is disclosed, and a 

 bank of dead white clouds where the Downs should be. 

 Under the very eye of the veiled sun a golden light and 

 warmth begins to nestle among the mounds of foliage at 

 the surface of the low woods. The beeches close by have 

 got a new voice in their crisp, cool leaves, of which every 

 one is doing something cool, though the air itself is 

 warm. Wood-pigeons coo. The white cloud-bank gives 

 way to an immeasurable half-moon of Downs, some bare, 

 some saddle-backed with woods, and far away and below, 

 out of the ocean of countless trees in the southern veil, a 

 spire. It is a spire which at this hour is doubtless moving 

 a thousand men with a thousand thoughts and hopes and 

 memories of men and causes, but moves me with the 

 thought alone that just a hundred years ago was buried 

 underneath it a child, a little child whose mother's mother 

 was at the pains to inscribe a tablet saying to all who pass 

 by that he was once "an amiable and most endearing 

 child." 



And what nights there are on the hills. The ash- 

 sprays break up the low full moon into a flower of many 



