sheen rippling on that clover, and feel a sort of sweet elation at the scent of it, and I wondered how much clover would be sown then?  Many things I thought of, sitting there, till the sun sank below the moor line, the wind died off the clover, and the midges slept.  Here and there in the iris-coloured sky a star crept out; the soft-hooting owls awoke.  But still I lingered, watching how, one after another, shapes and colours died into twilight; and I wondered what the postman thought of twilight, that inconvenient state, when things were neither dark nor light; and I wondered what the sheep were thinking this first night without their coats.  Then, slinking along the hedge, noiseless, unheard by my sleeping spaniel, I saw a tawny dog stealing by.  He passed without seeing us, licking his lean chops.

“Yes, friend,” I thought, “you have been after something very unholy; you have been digging up buried lamb, or some desirable person of that kind!”

Sneaking past, in this sweet night, which stirred in one such sentiment, that ghoulish cur was like the omnivorousness of Nature.  And it came to me, how wonderful and queer was a world which embraced within it, not only this red gloating dog, fresh from his feast on the decaying flesh of lamb, but all those hundreds of beings in whom the sight of a fly with one leg shortened produced a quiver of compassion.  For in this savage, slinking shadow, I knew that I had beheld a manifestation of divinity no less than in the smile of the sky, each minute growing more starry.  With what Harmony—­I thought—­can these two be enwrapped in this round world so fast that it cannot be moved!  What secret, marvellous, all-pervading Principle can harmonise these things!  And the old words ‘good’ and ‘evil’ seemed to me more than ever quaint.

It was almost dark, and the dew falling fast; I roused my spaniel to go in.

Over the high-walled yard, the barns, the moon-white porch, dusk had brushed its velvet.  Through an open window came a roaring sound.  Mr. Molton was singing “The Happy Warrior,” to celebrate the finish of the shearing.  The big doors into the garden, passed through, cut off the full sweetness of that song; for there the owls were already masters of night with their music.

On the dew-whitened grass of the lawn, we came on a little dark beast.  My spaniel, liking its savour, stood with his nose at point; but, being called off, I could feel him obedient, still quivering, under my hand.

In the field, a wan huddle in the blackness, the dismantled sheep lay under a holly hedge.  The wind had died; it was mist-warm. 1910

EVOLUTION