CHAPTER XIII 



AUGUST GOING WEST HAMPSHIRE AND WILTSHIRE 



RAIN begins as I set out and mount under the beeches. 

 The sky is dark as a ploughed field, but the leaves over- 

 head are full of light like precious stones. The rain 

 keeps the eyes down so that they see one by one the little 

 things of the wayside, the strings of the grey-green and 

 of the scarlet bryony berries, the stony bark of the young 

 ash unveiled by the moving leaves, the million tall straight 

 shoots which the strong nature of ash and hazel has soared 

 into since the spring. Then follows field after field of 

 corn, of sheep among hurdled squares, of mustard in 

 flower, of grass, interrupted now and then by the massed 

 laurels and rhododendrons and the avenues of monkey 

 puzzles that announce the pleasure grounds of the rich. 

 It is a high land of too level clay, chiefly blest in that 

 it beholds the Downs, their saddles of woodland, and, 

 through the deepest passes, the sea and an island rising 

 out of it like an iceberg; and that it is traversed by the 

 Pilgrims' Way, which gathers to itself Canterbury-bells 

 and marjoram under its hazels, and pours traveller's-joy 

 cloudily over the ash and brier that overhang the side of 

 an old chalk pit, long, straight and even like a wall. Just 

 here are many grassy lanes between hazel and blackthorn 

 hedges. An old farmhouse with ivied chimneys and ten 

 blind windows in front stands bereaved with weedy 

 garden, but for miles the air sounds with poultry and 

 the building of bungalows in deal and iron for strangers. 



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