52 HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



wind and rain. In such a mood on that evening I 

 went to one of those lonely barrows ; one that rises to 

 a height of nine or ten feet above the level heath, 

 and is about fifty yards round. It is a garden in the 

 brown desert, covered over with a dense growth of 

 furze bushes, still in flower, mixed with bramble and 

 elder and thorn, and heather hi great clumps, bloom- 

 ing, too, a month before its time, the fiery purple- 

 red of its massed blossoms, and of a few tall, taper- 

 ing spikes of foxglove, shining against the vivid green 

 of the young bracken. 



All this rich wild vegetation on that lonely mound 

 on the brown heath! 



Here, sheltered by the bushes, I sat and saw the 

 sun go down, and the long twilight deepen till the 

 oak woods of Beaulieu in the west looked black on 

 the horizon, and the stars came out : in spite of the 

 cold wind that made me shiver in my thin clothes, I 

 sat there for hours, held by the silence and solitariness 

 of that mound of the ancient dead. 



Sitting there, profoundly sad for no apparent cause, 

 with no conscious thought in my mind, it suddenly 

 occurred to me that I knew that spot from of old, 

 that in long past forgotten years I had often come 

 there of an evening and sat through the twilight, 

 in love with the loneliness and peace, wishing that 

 it might be my last resting-place. To sleep there 

 for ever the sleep that knows no waking ! We say 

 it, but do not mean do not believe it. Dreams do 



