180 WAYFARING NOTIONS 



has. They were somewhat scraggy and battered 

 in battles with gales — all the winds of heaven have 

 free run over Icklingham's waste, scrub, heath, 

 common, or what you please to style it ; but in 

 the sun — and it was sun, too — the wind was heated 

 till it almost bit, and you expected to hear 

 vegetation crackle like fir-cones and furze-pods 

 bursting. 



In the sun these elderly firs gave off resinous 

 aroma, making an air pine-bath from their 

 '' medicinal gums " — bress 'em ! — joyful to dwell in 

 and fill your lungs with. A big, long day I could 

 have spent in their company, or a little further on 

 where giant aspens rustled soothingly and sleepily 

 as might any waterfall, and a few steps beyond 

 them the Lark comes to a lock and sluice, which 

 might have sat for Constable's Flatford Lock on 

 the Stour. Here, before you actually get to 

 Icklingham, is a bridge with rails of exactly the 

 right height to lean upon, not too high nor too 

 low, but, as was the bear's chair, exactly a fit ; 

 and good playfellows too, among the willows and 

 sedges, the great trusses of purple loose-strife, 

 and waves of scented meadow-sweet, with a tall 

 lime, a vast hive for the bees using up the 

 blossoms and the honey-dew, and more amusing 

 company in the clear clean water, where dace and 

 roach — big chaps some — skirmished in shoals, 

 droves of fifty and more, nice sizeable fish for 

 those who want to catch them — I do not. 



What a power of quiet, peaceful thinking a 

 body can do looking down on green leaves and 

 moving water, and how disturbing to orderly 

 soothing meditation it is to have a forty-hum- 

 ming-bird power vivid, lurid blue kingfisher streak 

 like straight lightning through a bridge's dark 



