Mr. Fogo meanwhile, with easel and umbrella on his arm, climbed the hill slowly and with frequent pauses to turn and admire the landscape.  It was the freshest of spring mornings:  the short turf was beaded with dew, the furze-bushes on either hand festooned with gossamer and strung with mimic diamonds.  As he looked harbourwards, the radiance of sky mingling with the glitter of water dazzled and bewildered his sight:  below, and at the foot of the steep woods opposite, the river lay cool and shadowy, or vanished for a space beneath a cliff, where the red plough-land broke abruptly away with no more warning than a crazy hurdle.  Distinct above the dreamy hum of the little town, the ear caught the rattle of anchor-chains, the cries of an outward-bound crew at the windlass, the clanking of trucks beside the jetties; the creaking of oars in the thole-pins of a tiny boat below ascended musically; the very air was quick with all sounds and suggestions of spring, and of man going forth to his labour; the youthfulness of the morning ran in Mr. Fogo’s veins, and lent a buoyancy to his step.

By this time the town was lost to view; next, the bend of Kit’s House vanished, and now the broad flood spread in a silver lake full ahead.  On the ridge the pure air was simply intoxicating after the languor of the valley.  Mr. Fogo began to skip, to snap his fingers, to tilt at the gossamer with his umbrella, and once even halted to laugh hilariously at nothing.  An old horse grazing on an isolated patch of turf looked up in mild surprise; Mr. Fogo blushed behind his spectacles and hurried on.

He had gone some distance when a granite roller lying on the ploughed slope beneath a clump of bushes invited him to rest.  Mr. Fogo accepted the invitation, and seated himself to contemplate the scene.  The bush at his back was comfortable, and by degrees the bright intoxication of his senses settled to a drowsy content.  He pulled out his pipe and lit it.  Through the curls of blue smoke he watched the glitter on the water below, the prismatic dazzle of the clods where their glossy surface caught the sun, the lazy flap-flap of a heron crossing the valley, and he heard along the uplands the voice (sweetest of rural sounds, and, alas! now obsolete) of a farm-boy chanting to his team, “Brisk and Speedwell, Goodluck and Lively”—­and so sank by degrees into a soothing sleep.

When he awoke and looked lazily upwards, at first his eyes encountered gloom.  “Have I been sleeping all day?” was his first thought, not without alarm.  But under the darkness a bright ray was stealing.  Mr. Fogo put up his hand and encountered his umbrella, carefully spread over his face for shade.

This was mysterious; he could swear the umbrella was folded and lying at his side when he dropped asleep.  “It must be Caleb,” he thought, and stared around.  No Caleb was in sight, but he noticed that the sun was dropping towards the west, and noticed also, not fifty yards to the left, and quietly cropping a tuft of bushes, a red bull.