28o ‘FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
‘slender column grey against the grecn trees, sometimes 
in the churchyard, these crosses come on the mind like 
a sudden enigma. It requires an effort to grasp their 
meaning, so long have the ideas passed away which 
led to their crection. They almost startle modern 
‘thought. How many years since the peasant women 
knelt at their steps! On the base of one which has a 
sculptured shaft the wall-rue fern was growing. A 
young starling was perched on the yew by it; he couid 
but just fly, and fluttered across to the sill of the church 
window. Young birds called pettishly for food from the 
-bushes. Upon the banks hart’s-tongue was coming up 
fresh and green, and the early orchis was in flower. 
Fern and flower and fledglings had come again as they 
have come every year since the oldest of these ancient 
shafts was erected, for life is older, life is greyer, than 
the weather-beaten mouldings. But life, too, is fresh and 
young; the stern thought in the stone becomes more 
cold and grim as the centuries pass away. In the cre- 
vices at the foot of another cross wallflowers blossomed, 
and plants of evening primrose, not yet in flower, were 
growing. Under a great yew lay the last decaying beam 
of the stocks. A little yew tree grew on the top of the 
church tower, its highest branch just above the parapet. 
A thrush perhaps planted it—thrushes are fond of the 
viscous yew berries. Through green fields, in which the 
grass was rising high and sweet, a footpath took me by 
a solitary mill with an undershot wheel. The sheds 
‘about here are often supported on round columns of 
stone. Beyond the mill is a pleasant meadow, quiet, 
still, and sunlit; buttercup, sorrel, and daisy flowered 
among the grasses down to the streamlet, where comfrey, 
with white and pink-lined bells, stood at the water’s edge. 
‘A renowned painter, Walker, who died early, used to 
