J/K OLD VILLAGE. 



523 



could feel the rippling and the singing and the sparkling 

 back through the centuries. The brook is dead, for 

 when man goes nature ends. I dare say there is water 

 there still, but it is not the brook ; the brook is gone 

 like John Brown's soul. There used to be clouds over 

 the fields, white clouds in blue summer skies. I have 

 lived a good deal on clouds ; they have been meat to 

 me often ; they bring something to the spirit which even 

 the trees do not. I sec clouds now sometimes when the 

 iron grip of hell permits for a minute or two ; they are 

 very different clouds, and speak differently. I long for 

 some of the old clouds that had no memories. There 

 were nights in those times over those fields, not dark- 

 ness, but Night, full of glowing suns and glowing 

 richness of life that sprang up to meet them. The 

 nights are there still ; they arc everywhere, nothing 

 local in the night ; but it is not the Night to me seen 

 through the window. 



There used to be footpaths. Following one of them, 

 the first field always had a good crop of grass ; over the 

 next stile there was a great oak standing alone in the 

 centre of the field, generally a great cart-horse under it, 

 and a few rushes scattered about the furrows; the 

 fourth was always full of the finest clover ; in the fifth 

 you could scent the beans on the hill, and there was a 

 hedge like a wood, and a nest of the long-tailed tit ; the 

 sixth had a runnel and blue forget-me-nots ; the seventh 

 had a brooklet and scattered trees along it ; from the 

 eighth you looked back on the slope and saw the thatched 

 houses you had left behind under passing shadows, and 

 rounded white clouds going straight for the distant hills, 

 each cloud visibly bulging and bowed down like a bag. 

 I cannot think how the distant thatched houses came to 

 stand out with such clear definition and etched outline 



