difficulty to keep up with him.  The wakening birds were beginning to pipe their earliest carols; gorgeously-winged insects, shaken by the passing of human footsteps from their slumbers in the cups of flowers, soared into the air like jewels suddenly loosened from the floating robes of Aurora,—­and the gentle stir of rousing life sent a pulsing wave through the long grass.  Every now and again Bainton glanced up at the ‘Passon’s’ face and murmured under his breath,—­’Blue’s the colour—­there ain’t nowt to beat it!’ possibly inspired thereto by the very decided blue sparkle in the eyes of the ‘man of God’ who was marching steadily along in the ’Onward Christian Soldiers’ style, with his shoulders well back, his head well poised, and his whole bearing expressive of both decision and command.

Out of the woods they passed into an open clearing, where the meadows, tenderly green and wet with dew, sloped upwards into small hillocks, sinking again into deep dingles, adorned with may-trees that were showing their white buds like little pellets of snow among the green, and where numerous clusters of blackthorn spread out lovely lavish tangles of blossom as fine as shreds of bleached wool or thread-lace upon its jet-like stems.  Across these fields dotted with opening buttercups and daisies, Walden and his ’head man about the place’ made quick way, and climbing the highest portion of the rising ground just in front of them, arrived at a wide stretch of peaceful pastoral landscape comprising a fine view of the river in all its devious windings through fields and pastures, overhung at many corners with ancient willows, and clasping the village of St. Rest round about as with a girdle of silver and blue.  Here on a slight eminence stood the venerable sentinels of the fair scene,—­ the glorious old ‘Five Sisters’ beeches which on this very morning had been doomed to bid farewell for ever to the kind sky.  Noble creatures were they in their splendid girth and broadly-stretching branches, which were now all alive with the palest and prettiest young green,—­and as Walden sprang up the thyme-scented turfy ascent which lifted them proudly above all their compeers, his heart beat with mingled indignation and gladness,—­indignation that such grand creations of a bountiful Providence should ever have been so much as threatened with annihilation by a destructive, ill-conditioned human pigmy like Oliver Leach,—­and gladness, that at the last moment their safety was assured through the intervention of old Josey Letherbarrow.  For, of course Miss Vancourt herself would never have troubled about them.  Walden made himself inwardly positive on that score.  She could have no particular care or taste for trees, John thought.  It was the pathetic pleading of Josey,—­his quaint appearance, his extreme age—­and his touching feebleness, which taken all together had softened the callous heart of the mistress of the Manor, and had persuaded her to stay the intended outrage.