64 AN ANGLER AT LARGE 



signal fire. Surely the whole of Wiltshire can 

 see us up here. Ay, and Hants and Dorset to 

 boot and you can see them if you will, the one 

 south, the other west ; and if you have any 

 imagination to pierce that soft blue circle of haze 

 of which we are the centre, you shall see Somerset 

 and Gloucester and Oxford and all the other 

 noble counties of England. Yes, here we are, 

 with nothing between us and God's sky, and no 

 sound in our ears but the calling of the larks and 

 the song of this clean wind in the grasses. 



And my exasperating chatter ? Certainly. 



So ! Sit there a cigarette ? and fill your 

 eyes while I get my painting things out. For 

 I am not at all daunted by this landscape now 

 that my new colours have come. 



You perceive, sir, that this Beacon Down has 

 got in the way of our river. Hence this large 

 horseshoe bend that the Clere makes there below 

 us. Now you can see the whole of the water that 

 I fish. There's the mill, beside the church tower 

 among the elms, where that small road has just 

 crawled down through the chalk hills from Little 

 Harmony to meet the valley highway. And 

 there is Willows just below us. Do you mark 

 the thatch of our cottage, there, between the 



