174 HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



But he was sleeping very soundly, for when after going 

 a couple of hundred yards I looked back he was still 

 lying motionless on the same spot. 



But when I looked back, and when, regaining the 

 road, I went on my way, and indeed for long hours 

 after, I saw the boy vaguely, almost like a boy of mist, 

 and was hardly able to recall his features, so faintly 

 had he impressed me ; while the spider on her flower, 

 and the small male .that wooed and won her many 

 times yet never ventured to take her, were stamped 

 so vividly on my brain, that even if I had wished it I 

 could not have got rid of that persistent image. It 

 made me miserable to think that I had left, thousands 

 of miles away, a world of spiders exceeding in size, 

 variety of shape and beauty and richness of colour- 

 ing those I found here surpassing them, too, in the 

 marvellousness of their habits and that ferocity of 

 disposition which is without a parallel in nature. I 

 wished I could drop this burden of years so as to go 

 back to them, to spend half a lifetime in finding out 

 some of their fascinating secrets. Finally, I envied 

 those who in future years will grow up in that green 

 continent, with this passion in their hearts, and have 

 the happiness which I had missed. 



I, of course, knew that it was but the too vivid and 

 persistent image of that particular creature on which 

 my attention had been fixed which made me regard 

 spiders generally as the most interesting beings in 

 nature the proper study of mankind, in fact. But it 



