A deep shadow creeping towards us explains it.  Where the sunlight falls, there steeple or house glows and shines; when it has passed, the haze that is really there, though itself invisible, instantly blots out the picture.  The thing may be seen over and over again in the course of a few minutes; it would be difficult for an artist to catch so fleeting an effect.  The shadow of the cloud is not black—­it lacks several shades of that—­there is in it a faint and yet decided tint of blue.  This tone of blue is not the same everywhere—­here it is almost distinct, there it fades; it is an aerial colour which rather hints itself than shows.  Commencing the descent the view is at once lost, but we pass a beech whose beauty is not easily conveyed.  The winds have scarcely rifled it; being in a sheltered spot on the slope, the leaves are nearly perfect.  All those on the outer boughs are a rich brown—­some, perhaps, almost orange.  But there is an inner mass of branches of lesser size which droop downwards, something after the manner of a weeping willow; and the leaves on these are still green and show through.  Upon the whole tree a flood of sunshine pours, and over it is the azure sky.  The mingling, shading, and contrast of these colours give a lovely result—­the tree is aglow, its foliage ripe with colour.

Farther down comes the steady sound of deliberate blows, and the upper branches of the hedge falls beneath the steel.  A sturdy labourer, with a bill on a pole, strikes slow and strong and cuts down the hedge to an even height.  A dreadful weapon that simple tool must have been in the old days before the advent of the arquebus.  For with the exception of the spike, which is not needed for hedge work, it is almost an exact copy of the brown bill of ancient warfare; it is brown still, except where sharpened.  Wielded by a sinewy arm, what, gaping gashes it must have slit through helm and mail and severed bone!  Watch the man there—­he slices off the tough thorn as though it were straw.  He notes not the beauty of the beech above him, nor the sun, nor the sky; but on the other hand, when the sky is hidden, the sun gone, and the beautiful beech torn by the raving winds neither does he heed that.  Rain and tempest affect him not; the glaring heat of summer, the bitter frost of winter are alike to him.  He is built up like an oak.  Believe it, the man that from his boyhood has stood ankle-deep in the chill water of the ditch, patiently labouring with axe and bill; who has trudged across the furrow, hand on plough, facing sleet and mist; who has swung the sickle under the summer sun—­this is the man for the trenches.  This is the man whom neither the snows of the North nor the sun of the South can vanquish; who will dig and delve, and carry traverse and covered way forward in the face of the fortress, who will lie on the bare ground in the night.  For they who go up to battle must fight the hard earth and the tempest, as well as face bayonet and ball.  As of yore with the brown bill, so now with the rifle—­the muscles that have been trained about the hedges and fields will not fail England in the hour of danger.