134 ^IMBLES OF A 



their vivid stains of crimson there is often a strange 

 purplish bloom, a venomous look, that goes hand in 

 hand with the flavour of ink or verdigris. But all is 

 grist that comes to the cider-mill. It is no matter if 

 the fruit be rotten ; it is of little moment if the taste of 

 the fresh apples should be rough and disagreeable. Good 

 and bad are crushed together in the mill. 



But with all this there is no denying that the juice 

 fresh drawn, the sweet unfermented cider, is a pleasant 

 beverage enough. It is in the after processes that cider 

 making becomes a fine art. Extreme care is needed 

 during fermentation ; and so comparatively seldom is 

 this care bestowed that the average rustic vintage is, 

 when considered finished and matured, simply a detest- 

 able drink. The man who says he likes it is to be 

 regarded with suspicion, and he who calls for another 

 jug of it is a man who would drink anything. 



The story of an apple orchard is full of life and colour. 

 There are few country sights more full of beauty than 

 the bloom which in the month of May gathers so thickly 

 on the leafless branches, that gleam of snow-white 

 blossom tinged with softest crimson, which is the crown- 

 ing glory of a Somersetshire spring. 



The best tended trees will give, no doubt, the finest 

 show of flowers ; but it is not among the precise and 

 orderly lines of a well-kept orchard that the worshipper 

 of nature loves to linger. His haunt is rather among 

 the old weather-beaten trees on the warm slopes of some 

 secluded valley in the hills ; trees whose branches never 

 felt the gardener's steel, and whose ancient trunks are 



