CHAPTER XIV 



THE NEW USE OF SUN-DIALS 



DURING long, slow-pacing centuries the sun-dial marked 

 the passage of time on the lichen-stained towers of grey 

 old churches, where somnolent owls blinked protestingly 

 in their crannies when the bells were chimed, and settled 

 themselves back to sleep in mute disapproval. The only 

 vegetation, other than the rank grass among the humps 

 of earth that covered the graves in the churchyard, whose 

 progress it told, was the Yews, and they moved with 

 almost as complacent a deliberation as the serene and 

 contented years. 



The sun-dial rarely penetrated the garden. If seen at 

 all it was in some old manorial garden, the voiceless 

 but speaking companion of clipped Cypresses, monthly 

 Roses, white Lilies and Hollyhocks, growing in rectangular 

 beds bordered with Box. There it served a proud and 

 high-born lady who made of it a mere creature of the 

 summer. In the winter it stood forlorn and desolate, 

 the rain dripping from its iron nose in melancholy plashes. 

 During those shadowless days time stood still for it, and 

 the flowers slept a sleep that to the deserted dial seemed 

 very long and weary. Brooding, morose and sombre, 

 it rusted in enforced inanition, mourning for the vanished 

 power that made it articulate. 



In modern times the sun-dial does wider duty. Its 

 fastness in the secluded Dutch garden has been dis- 



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