88 MEMORIES 



" My wife's brother's son," returns the old man, 

 /7^ losing the point, " is a hem-an-alj iine shot with a 

 rifle, they tell me. Lives down at Hadlow," jerking • 

 his thumb over his shoulder. 



" Ah, I suppose he is in the volunteers ? " 



" No," says John very deliberately, "no, I doan't 

 know as he was ever anything-/^. But, there," he 

 adds sententiously, " he must have been something 

 somewAen or he couldn't never have been nothin'." 



There are truisms which defeat us by a sense of 

 ^ hopelessness. I suppose it was just the appeal from 

 this state of paralysis which herewith shook me 

 from my reverie. But even as I woke memory 

 wove itself into a rhyming measure, and thus it 

 ran: , 



THE SWAN'S NEST. 



I knew in the days that are long ago, 

 In the land that I love the best. 



Of a cradled spot in a slumberous vale 

 Called ever *' The Old Swan's Nest." 



And never an island lay more dear 



In the purple of Indian seas ; 

 For all that it was but a tangle-space 



And a score of pollard trees. 



