III 
IN THE WEST COUNTRY 
I 
A GLIMPSE OF THE BARLE 
IX days’ C, O's, leave meant transition 
from a London depét, surrounded by 
bricks and mortar, to the rich valley of 
the Barle. Although it was mid-March, 
winter in that year of grace was loth to let go its 
grip—witness the bare bushes, the sombre-hued 
woods, the beech fences still a determined brown. 
But the bleating of lambs, the singing of thrushes, 
that indefinable feeling of approaching spring, 
told a gladder tale. 
A forenoon start was made just by a bridge, 
one corner ivy-clad. The morning still was dull 
and gloomy, and prospects seemed poor ; yet all 
this mattered not, for it was the old, old sport, and 
good it was to have rod in hand once more, to 
feel again the swish of water against waders. 
“Very early for waders,” the wise man says. 
The justice of the observation is admitted. But 
the Barle, far from its source, is big as well as 
