142 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



dingy with dust and dead leaves, but flecking the land- 

 scape as if some Titanic artist had spattered the world 

 with a brush full of china white. They slowly recede 

 into the shadow of the walls, and suddenly on a morning 

 in April, when the song-sparrows are singing and the sun 

 is hot on your neck, they are gone, vanished in the 

 night, even the long white streak across the highest up- 

 land pasture. Then we know that Spring has come 

 indeed. 



The old walls or fences which divide a country high- 

 way from the bounding fields are always alluring al- 

 most as alluring as the bars which occasionally break 

 their line and invite the vagrant wayfarer to explore 

 down a lane to the river or up a wood road into the green 

 dimness of the hills. To the lover of gardens they are 

 alluring for the perfect background they always make to 

 the wild garden of the roadside. Even in Winter, a 

 gray stone wall rising above the snow, with the lavender 

 stalks of blackberry vines against it, is a lovely thing. 

 When it peeps between pink roses in June, or wild sun- 

 flowers in early August or golden-rod and asters in 

 September, here a round gray stone, there a pinnacle of 

 quartz, again a gap, perhaps, to show a tiny vista of the 

 fields beyond, it is the gardener's envy and despair. 

 Nor is the roadside fence much less effective, for over it 

 the clematis scrambles as upon a trellis, and the bitter- 

 sweet vines twine till they can find a tree to climb and 

 hang out their red berries against the coming Winter. 



