332 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



reason to suppose that the air overhead is clearer of 

 vapour than that between us and the horizon. In 

 fact, the clouds we see away there are, if anywhere, 

 over the heads of some other people, who, never- 

 theless, like us, see blue sky. Those beautiful, curd- 

 like, everchanging masses are only visions. So is the 

 solitary beech blazing with splendour in the midst 

 of a rising field. Field and beech are both visions. 

 We can catch and analyse the blades of grass and the 

 orange-scarlet leaves, as we can catch spots of the 

 water that go to make up the clouds, but field and 

 tree and cloud or mountain, as we see them, must 

 disappear as we walk up to them. Rod and line and 

 we ourselves are a little more real, or we think we are. 

 A big flight of plover passes from the invisibility 

 of the blue to show every flying dot against the cloud - 

 peaks, to be lost again as they come between us and 

 the sepia masses nearer the horizon, then to show 

 like a snow-storm as they all turn their white breasts 

 before sinking below the line of the hills. A mallard 

 and two ducks rise with clangour from the reeds at 

 our feet and fly off in a long sweep that may or 

 may not become a complete circle. Moorhens are 

 clucking uneasily in the dark shadows beneath the 

 osiers. A weasel, slipping eagerly through an out- 

 lying fringe of withered meadow-sweet, reveals suffi- 

 cient cause for their anxiety. It is here that we 

 saw in the summer a tiny moorhen disappear in a 

 flurry of ripples as a pike, doubtless, came by a meal 

 not found in his strictly regular bill of fare. The 

 memory sets our sprat spinning with new hope, but 

 we comb the suspected lair of the monster without 

 tangible result. 



