PINES AND MOORLAND 
203 
Now there is a turn of the twisting lane; a sudden break, 
and the liigli bank to our right is topped no longer with trees 
and bracken, but golden corn, through which the wind comes 
a-gasping, faint for breath in the dryness of the mellowing corn- 
spears. \\’e scramble up the bank, and lo, a wide dim stretch 
of blue world, far and far away, and farther and dimmer yet, 
a gleaming run of white Downs, just visible, and no more, like 
the imagined things of a dream. The heat shimmers and quivers 
over it all, like a flickering pulse of fire ; a few frail butterflies 
come drifting by, dream things, too, and very soft from the green 
shadows we have just passed coos the wood-pigeon. 
Does she really e.xist, this sleeping dream-world in her 
golden glow of haze and colour ? Or are we dream-creatures 
walking a magic world ? 
Ah ! come away, lest the spell be too great for us. Let us 
touch the nodding grasses to wake us up again, to remind us 
that many another page of the great Story-book waits our turning. 
So back we come to our little rutted lane once more ; and 
now the steepness threatens to rob us of the sore-needed breath 
our few moments’ pause in dreamland has just given us. But 
a short robbery, however, for here we are again upon the level ; 
then a turn to the left, where two or three little sleepy cottages 
peer lazily out at us from under trailing brows of creeper and 
honeysuckle, with all the peasant’s leisurely unamaze in the 
half-humorous twinkling of their window-eyes; looking so much 
part of the earth — windows, walls, and roofs — that one might 
almost believe them sprung spontaneously from her fertile womb. 
The shadowy warmth of great pine-woods faces us ; there is a 
sloping sweep of greenest meadow, splashed with a blotch of — 
is it indeed ? — yes, purple heather ! lying to our right, and then 
down runs the steep hill all in a hurry, and carries us with a 
swinging lightsomeness of foot, very welcome, into the jumbled 
group of little cottages that call themselves “ the village,” which, 
wee as it is, is yet not so wee as to justify us in putting the 
recollection of it away on a dusty shelf in our mind, and never 
taking it down again. 
You who love what I love, and have come rambling all this 
way with me to find it, will know why this particular shelf is 
kept so well dusted, and so free from moth and mildew. 
For look ! here we turn another page of the great Story-book, 
and enter into no less a place than the heart of the great pine- 
world, and know, with that odd quickening of pulse known only 
to those who love the moorland, that the purple is out on the 
heather, and the sun high in the blue. 
Come ! take hands, all fellow-lovers of the blooming heather, 
and up the slope with me, no matter how steep ; up the face of 
the cliff that shadows the little village, up through gorse and 
bracken, and up the straggling road, ankle-deep in golden sand. 
Come quickly ! — for there’s no time like the present — till high 
we stand on the stretch of moorland, high over the little village 
