CHILDREN OF EARTH 199 



under the hazels, yet fully seen, were the wild basil and 

 marjoram and centaury and knapweed and wood-betony, 

 and over them hung moths of green crimson-spotted silk. 

 There, too, were the plants that smell most of the dry 

 summer — the white parsleys and the white or rosy cow- 

 parsnip, the bedstraws white and yellow, the yellow mug- 

 wort. Now and then the hedges gave way and on either 

 hand was open turf; sloping steep and rough on one side, 

 grooved by ancient paths of men and cattle, dotted by 

 thorns, with the freshly flowering traveller's-joy over 

 them, ash-trees at the top; on the other side, level, skirted 

 by cloudy wych-elms and having at one corner a white 

 inn half shadowed by a walnut, and two sycamores and 

 cattle below them; and at another, a stately autumnal 

 house veiled by the cedars and straight yews on its darkly 

 glowing lawn. 



All these things I saw as if they had been my own, 

 as if I were going again slowly through old treasures 

 long hidden away, so that they were memoried and yet 

 unexpected. Nothing was too small to be seen, and 

 ascending the chalk hill among the beeches every white 

 flint was clear on the sward, each in its different shape — 

 many chipped as the most cunning chisel would be proud 

 to chip them; one, for example, carved by the loss of 

 two exquisitely curved and balanced flakes into the like- 

 ness of a moth's expanded upper wings. 



A dark beech alley, paved with the gold and green of 

 moss and walled by crumbling chalk, brought me to the 

 tumulus. There lay the old house in shadow, its ash 

 crests lighted yellow by horizontal beams that caught 

 here the summit of a wood, and there the polished grass 

 Stems on a rising field. It was the one house, and at that 



