I was walking with Father Payne one hot summer day upon a field-path he was very fond of.  There was a copse, through the middle of which the little river, the Fyllot, ran.  It was the boundary of the Aveley estate, and it here joined another stream, the Rode, which came in from the south.  The path went through the copse, dense with hazels, and there was always a musical sound of lapsing waters hidden in the wood.  The birds sang shrill in the thicket, and Father Payne said, “This is the juncture of Pison and Hiddekel, you know, rivers of Paradise.  Aveley is Havilah, where the gold is good, and where there is bdellium, if we only knew where to look for it.  I fancy it is rich in bdellium.  I came down here, I remember, the first day I took possession.  It was wonderful, after being so long among the tents of Kedar, to plant my flag in Havilah; I made a vow that day—­I don’t know if I have kept it!”

“What was that?” I said.

“Only that I would not get too fond of it all,” said Father Payne, smiling, “and that I would share it with other people.  But I have got very fond of it, and I haven’t shared it.  Asking people to stay with you, that they may see what a nice place you have to live in, is hardly sharing it.  It is rather the other way—­the last refinement of possession, in fact!”

“It’s very odd,” he went on, “that I should love this little bit of the world so much as I do.  It’s called mine—­that’s a curious idea.  I have got very little power over it.  I can’t prevent the trees and flowers from growing here, or the birds from nesting here, if they have a mind to do so.  I can only keep human beings out of it, more or less.  And yet I love it with a sort of passion, so that I want other people to love it too.  I should like to think that after I am gone, some one should come here and see how exquisitely beautiful it is, and wish to keep it and tend it.  That’s what lies behind the principle of inheritance; it isn’t the money or the position only that we desire to hand on to our children—­it’s the love of the earth and all that grows out of it; and possession means the desire of keeping it unspoiled and beautiful, I could weep at the idea of this all being swept away, and a bdellium-mine being started here, with a factory-chimney and rows of little houses; and yet I suppose that if the population increased, and the land was all nationalised, a great deal of the beauty of England would go.  I hope, however, that the sense of beauty might increase too—­I don’t think the country people here have much notion of beauty.  They only like things to remain as they know them.  It’s a fearful luxury really for a man like myself to live in a land like this, so full of old woodland and pasture, which is only possible under rich proprietors.  I’m an abuse, of course.  I have got a much larger slice of my native soil than any one man ought to have; but I don’t see the way out.  The individual can’t dispossess himself—­it’s the system which is wrong.”