236 THE RECTORY AND ITS BIRDS 



interlacing branches ; and the insect life which 

 swarms among them will fill the place of the birds 

 and climbing animals of the tropics. So was it 

 with us children and the barn. As you lay silent 

 in the soft, sweet-smelling hay, and gave yourself 

 up, as children best will and can, to the influence, 

 the genius, the religio of the spot, the limitations of 

 time, and space, and probability seemed to vanish 

 into air. The rustle of the mouse or rat, coming 

 nearer and nearer, filled you with a half-fascinating 

 awe, as though it were the footfall of some beast of 

 prey in an Indian jungle. The venerable rafters 

 seemed to grow in size, in the prevailing gloom, the 

 darkness visible ; the roof above them seemed to rise 

 higher and higher, till it loomed on the imagination 

 like the groined arches of some Gothic cathedral, 

 and the yard-long cobwebs of the centuries which 

 depended from it, seemed, like the glowing ashes in 

 a dying fire, to take weird and ever- varying shapes ; 

 now, as it were, of tattered banners, the relics of a 

 hard-fought field ; and now again, as the breeze 

 swayed them to and fro, of the nodding plumes of a 

 stately hearse, making its way slowly and silently 

 towards an open grave. Tempered awe is often 

 dearer to the heart of a child than boisterous 

 merriment, and its pleasurable pains are among the 



