1 66 



THE ANGLER'S SOUVENIR. 



n 



ones. There were quite as many as we could carry, 

 so we left off fishing and rambled about gathering 

 wild- strawberries, chasing conies, seeking for young 

 wood-pigeons wherewith to make a pie, and generally 

 behaving ourselves in a very silly, boyish, yet happy 

 way. In truth, the youngest of us was by far the 

 sedatest, and looked down with calm superiority 

 upon our elderly frolics. 



A great part of the wood had been cut down since 

 the old times, so that we could see away over a 

 forest of foxglove to the wild Welsh hills. Silent 

 and still they lay in the swift-chasing sunshine and 

 shadow. Their lower sides were green with irre- 

 gularly mapped-out fields, and dotted with lonely 

 farm-houses, from which the smoke crept lazily 

 upwards, or whirled downwards before a sudden 

 gust of wind. The sheep were so distant and small 

 that their motions were not observable, and they 

 gave no life to the view, so that far as the eye could 

 see all was still and lonely. A tiny village, clustered 

 round an ancient church, seemed at that distance 

 dead and deserted. 



The hill-tops arrested the flying clouds that broke 

 against them, and streamed up the glens like rivers 

 with an upward current. The rounded outlines of 

 the nearer hills changed in the distance to the 

 bluff crags and bold projections of the Snowdon 

 mountains. Over the valley the raven floated from 

 his nest on the inaccessible cliff, and his shadow 

 fell on the sunny fields below. The ordered con- 



