THE VALLEY AND ITS SINGER 215 



It sounds, comparatively, like a hurdy-gurdy, yet 

 the lark will not be gainsaid as the songster of young 

 earth. When we see the chubby village faces up- 

 turned to follow him in his vulgar ecstasy, we are 

 quite certain that he gives them quite as much 

 spiritual enjoyment as is good for their healthy age. 



Our valley, instead of widening as it goes, runs 

 almost through gates at Box Hill. The chalk, soft as 

 it is, has stood the ravage of water better than the 

 ragstone and weald clay. Box Hill is steep as a 

 mountain, perhaps because the box has kept its wall 

 up. If you begin to scramble down, it needs all 

 those tall, thin stems to save you from falling into 

 the Mole, that runs sucking at the base of the hill. 

 Then you can cross the floor of the valley in a few 

 strides, and again rise up to the heights of Ranmore. 

 Our valley will be really more orthodox when the 

 Medway or the Arun shall have turned it upside- 

 down. But our chalk hills can never make a respect- 

 able watershed. They are sponges into which the 

 rain sinks, to emerge, quite unobtrusively, somewhere 

 beneath the ground-level of the valley. There are 

 gulleys that, in other hills, would be tinkling glens, 

 but no visible stream runs down these chalk-hill 

 gulleys. If they begin to run, they sink through the 

 bed, to take up their course in a definite channel 

 underground, or just to wet the sponge to oozing- 

 point lower down. These streamless valleys, however, 

 make pretty gorges in their green grass and their 

 woods of pine. We fondly call them Switzerland, 

 especially that one which teases into sharp zigzags 

 the road that will ascend its sides. At the foot of it 

 a little house backs into a tall screen of pines a 



