A HEATHER EPISODE. 



signs of devastation on the ground under 

 foot ; only the great charred stems and 

 gaunt blackened branches rise above its 

 smiling mass of green leaves and bright 

 blossoms, to tell anew the half-forgotten tale 

 of ruin and disaster. 



Here in England the rose-bay is a less 

 frequent denizen, for it loves the wilds, and 

 feels most at home in deep rich meadow 

 bottoms unoccupied by tillage. Now, in 

 Britain these conditions do not often occur 

 since the Norman conquest ; still, I have 

 seen vast sheets of its tall pink pyramids of 

 bloom at John Evelyn's Wootton ; while 

 even up here, on our heathery uplands, it 

 fights hard for life among the gorse and 

 bracken. Its beautiful spikes of irregular 

 flowers, wide open below and tapering at 

 the top into tiny knobs of bud, are among 

 the loveliest elements in the natural flora of 

 my poor three acres. 



We were lying beside them, then, out of 

 the eye of the sun, under the shadow of one 



