shades.  He forgets that Nature adorned the bough for other purpose than his joy; forgets that strange creatures, with many legs and hungry mouths, will presently tatter each musical dome of rustling green; forgets that he gazes upon a battlefield awaiting savage armies, which will fill high Summer with ceaseless war, to strew the fair earth with slain.  He suffers dead Winter to bury her dead, seeks the wine of life that brims in the chalices of Spring flowers:  plucks blade and blossom, and is a child again, if Time has so dealt with him that for a little he can thus far retrace his steps; and, lastly, he turns once more to the Mother he has forgotten, to find that she has not forgotten him.  The whisper of her passing in a greenwood glade is the murmur of waters invisible and of life unseen; the scent of her garment comes sweet on the bloom of the blackthorn; high heaven and lowly forget-me-not alike mirror the blue of her wonderful eyes; and the gleam of the sunshine on rippling rivers and dreaming clouds reflects the gold of her hair.  She moves a queen who, passing through one fair corner of her world-wide kingdom, joys in it.  She, the sovereign of the universe, reigns here too, over the buds and the birds, and the happy, unconsidered life of weald and wold.  Each busy atom and unfolding frond is dear to her; each warm nest and hidden burrow inspires like measure of her care and delight; and at this time, if ever, we may think of Nature as forgetting Death for one magic moment, as sharing the wide joy of her wakening world, as greeting the young mother of the year’s hopes, as pressing to her bosom the babes of Spring with many a sunny smile and rainbowed tear.

Through the woods in Teign Valley passed Clement Hicks and his sweetheart about a fortnight after Lawyer Ford had been laid to rest in Chagford Churchyard.  Chris talked about her brother and the great enterprise he had determined upon.  She supported Will and spoke with sanguine words of his future; but Clement regarded the project differently.

“To lease Newtake Farm is a fool’s trick,” he said.  “Everybody knows the last experiments there.  The place has been empty for ten months, and those who touched it in recent years only broke their hearts and wasted their substance.”

“Well, they weern’t such men as Will.  Theer’s a fitness about it, tu; for Will’s awn gran’faither prospered at Newtake; an’ if he could get a living, another may.  Mother do like the thought of Will being there somehow.”

“I know it.  The sentiment of the thing has rather blinded her natural keen judgment.  Curious that I should criticise sentiment in another person; but it ’s like my cranky, contrary way.  Only I was thinking of Will’s thousand pounds.  Newtake will suck it out of his pocket quicker than Cranmere sucks up a Spring shower.”

“Well, I’m more hopeful.  He knows the value of money; an’ Phoebe will help him when she comes up.  The months slip by so quickly.  By the time I’ve got the cobwebs out of the farm an’ made the auld rooms water-sweet, I dare say theer’ll be talk of his wife joining him.”