66 FEBRUARY 



of the hamlet s natural history how birds delighted in 

 the engaging reach immediately below the mill. The 

 ways of a few rarer denizens may be repeated. A 

 kingfisher watched day after day from the boughs of 

 a thorn that weeped over the steep bank. Dabchick 

 lurked under the blackberries that more closely over 

 hang the same bank. At night and early morning, 

 when the village was abed, wild duck came there with 

 some regularity ; and I have seen a duck land on the 

 bank not twenty yards away with ten babies at her 

 tail. Moorhen always nest there ; and I have seen 

 young birds almost bump against the water voles which 

 have always abounded. All the population of the 

 stream, whether exiled or not, will rejoice in the 

 new bubbles and in the cleansing of the water that 

 may ensue. 



The mill in question is well within the radius suggested 

 for the green girdle that is proposed for London ; nor 

 is any piece of country better designed for the recreation 

 that comes of walking in English scenes. Spring is early 

 by the river, and winter late. Already a weeping willow 

 is green in leaf, and the water buttercup begins to sprout 

 underneath the water, and the grass at the edge has 

 grown into spring greenness. The walk along the valley 

 has few rivals at any date, not least at this- The little 

 black farm is the only building that separates the Domes 

 day Mill from the fourteenth-century cottage a mile and 

 more below it. Stevenson called Hazlitt an epicure 

 because he liked a bend in the road when he went for a 

 walk. The river makes epicures of us all. Its bends 

 may be as sudden as the crook of a contracted elbow, or 

 it may wander in lazy curves, till it passes the line of 

 deciduous cypresses with their queerly knuckled roots, 

 and is persuaded to become a lake, before it passes on 



