DART ,55 



turn, and ere winter, if death does not come between, 

 they win to the deep distant pool with shelving bank 

 and heather border that they know of old and seek 

 again. 



At Holne Chase the Webburn leaps to her greater 

 sister, and anon Dart, her song and dance ended, swells 

 to full womanhood and sweeps into the land of the 

 ripe red earth, of wide water meadows and shining 

 corn. Buckfastleigh has vanished ; gauzes of salmon- 

 net rise along the reaches ; and then, navigable now, 

 the river sees for the last time certain grey, southern 

 crowns of her motherland afar off on the ramparts 

 of the Moor. Now the little township of Totnes 

 shimmers under shining blue mist of slate roofs sur- 

 mounted by a red church tower ; then it is lost, and 

 with it Dartmoor vanishes for ever, while in many 

 a noble turn and bend the tidal river sweeps on- 

 ward beneath hanging woods. Here arise plane on 

 plane of green oak, shining with reflected light, 

 fretted and inwrought with the deep but scanty shadows 

 of noon. On either bank little calves stand in the 

 shade, their water-pictures ruddy on the oily umber of 

 the shadowed river ; horses meet also, fraternise, and 

 stand side by side, with nose to tail, after their wise 

 way, that each may whisk the flies from off his brother. 

 Shorn grass lands and corn ready for the sickle, broken 

 spinnies, scattered elms in the long hedgerows, and 

 wide spaces of the Devon red extend here to left, to 

 right, and before. 



Presently Duncannon's cots peep along the bank, 



