Robin Hood's Barn 



plorer's spirit, I would wander through them on 

 those narrow cow-paths that have been thudded 

 out by daily passage of the herd. For the miracle 

 I wonder at is sameness and not novelty. I 

 breathe quickest when I find that every stick and 

 stone, every bush and tree and thicket is mar- 

 velously as it was. 



So, after a winter's absence, I find a real exhil- 

 aration in tugging at the gate that leads into the 

 cow-lane and starting off upon a visit to old 

 haunts. How much have I forgotten? Will 

 remembrance come back sharply by some gaunt 

 omission or gently by the presence of familiar 

 scent and shape and sound? 



As I pick my way through the clutter of the 

 barnyard, assurance greets me swiftly in the 

 earthy smell. When have I ever failed to catch 

 in this rich reek, the pungency of fever-few, and 

 when on looking down, have I failed to find the 

 groundmaUow rounding out its little cheeses in 

 this chum of muck. On either side of the straight 

 way are open fields which surely some day must 

 be planted to grovmd crops. To-day they are as 

 I best remember them. Theirs is a surface yield 



[i6o] 



