THE EXILE’S RETURN.

Perhaps you have been away in distant parts of the earth, each day crowded with new experiences and slowly obscuring the clear pictures of England with which you left:  perhaps you have only been hidden away in London, amid its ceaseless noise, its strange faces, its monotonous recurrence of duties.  Let us say, in any case, that you are returning home for a space to the quiet of Northern Cornwall.

You look out of the high window of a Plymouth hotel early in the morning.  There is a promise of a beautiful autumn day—­a ring of pink mist lies around the horizon; overhead the sky is clear and blue; the white sickle of the moon still lingers visible.  The new warmth of the day begins to melt the hoarfrost in the meadows, and you know that out beyond the town the sun is shining brilliantly on the wet grass, with the brown cattle gleaming red in the light.

You leave the great world behind, with all its bustle, crowds and express engines, when you get into the quiet little train that takes you leisurely up to Launceston, through woods, by the sides of rivers, over great valleys.  There is a sense of repose about this railway journey.  The train stops at any number of small stations—­apparently to let the guard have a chat with the station-master—­and then jogs on in a quiet, contented fashion.  And on such an autumn day as this, that is a beautiful, still, rich-colored and English-looking country through which it passes.  Here is a deep valley, all glittering with the dew and the sunlight.  Down in the hollow a farmyard is half hidden behind the yellowing elms; a boy is driving a flock of white geese along the twisting road; the hedges are red with the withering briers.  Up here, along the hillsides, the woods of scrub-oak are glowing with every imaginable hue of gold, crimson and bronze, except where a few dark firs appear, or where a tuft of broom, pure and bright in its green, stands out among the faded brackens.  The gorse is profusely in bloom:  it always is in Cornwall.  Still farther over there are sheep visible on the uplands; beyond these, again, the bleak brown moors rise into peaks of hills; overhead the silent blue, and all around the sweet, fresh country air.

With a sharp whistle the small train darts into an opening in the hills:  here we are in the twilight of a great wood.  The tall trees are becoming bare; the ground is red with the fallen leaves; through the branches the blue-winged jay flies, screaming harshly; you can smell the damp and resinous odors of the ferns.  Out again we get into the sunlight! and lo! a rushing, brawling, narrow stream, its clear flood swaying this way and that by the big stones; a wall of rock overhead crowned by glowing furze; a herd of red cattle sent scampering through the bright-green grass.  Now we get slowly into a small white station, and catch a glimpse of a tiny town over in the valley:  again we go on by wood and valley, by rocks and streams and farms.  It is a pleasant drive on such a morning.