THE END OF WINTER 29 



by the black yews that resemble caverns among the paler 

 trees, or, in the spring, by the green haze of a few larches 

 and the white flames of the beam tree buds. Sometimes 

 a stream rises at the head of the coombe, and before its 

 crystal is a yard wide and ankle deep over the crumbling 

 chalk it is full of trout; the sunny ripples are meshed like 

 honeycomb. If there is not a stream there is a hop 

 garden, or there is a grassy floor approached by neither 

 road nor path and crossed only by huntsman and hounds. 

 All the year round the coombes, dripping, green and still, 

 are cauldrons for the making and unmaking of mists, 

 mists that lie like solid level snow or float diaphanous 

 and horizontal of airiest silk across the moon or the 

 morning sun. The coombes breed whole families, long 

 genealogical trees, of echoes which the child delights to 

 call up from their light sleep; so, too, do fox and owl at 

 night, and the cow on a calm evening; and as to the horn 

 and the cry of hounds, the hangers entangle and repeat 

 them as if they would imprison them for ever, so that the 

 phantom exceeds the true. This is the home of the 

 orchises and of the daintiest snails. In spring, yellow and 

 white and yellowish green flowers are before all the rest 

 under the beeches — the flowers of the golden green saxi- 

 frage and delicate moschatel, the spurge and the spurge 

 laurel, the hellebore, the white violet and wood sorrel, 

 and the saffron-hearted primrose which becomes greenish 

 in the light of its own leaves; to these must be added the 

 yellow green of young foliage and of moss. Fairest of all 

 the white flowers is the frost flower that grows about 

 some rotten fallen branch day after day in curls that are 

 beyond silk, or a child's hair, or wool when it is first 



