as
often as their eyes met a smile of contentment answered on either's
face.

They alighted at Chelmsford, and were met by the farmer in whose house
they were going to lodge, a stolid, good-natured fellow named
Pammenter, with red, leathery cheeks, and a corkscrew curl of black
hair coming forward on each temple. His trap was waiting, and in a few
minutes they started on the drive to Danbury. The distance is about
five miles, and, until Danbury Hill is reached, the countryside has no
point of interest to distinguish it from any other representative bit
of rural Essex. It is merely one of those quiet corners of flat, homely
England, where man and beast seem on good terms with each other, where
all green things grow in abundance, where from of old tilth and
pasture-land are humbly observant of seasons and alternations, where
the brown roads are familiar only with the tread of the labourer, with
the light wheel of the farmer's gig, or the rumbling of the solid warn.
By the roadside you pass occasionally a mantled pool, where perchance
ducks or geese are enjoying themselves; and at times there is a
pleasant glimpse of farm-yard, with stacks and barns and stables. All
things as simple as could be, but beautiful on this summer afternoon,
and priceless when one has come forth from the streets of Clerkenwell.

Farmer Pammenter was talkative, and his honest chest-voice sounded
pleasantly; but the matter of his discourse might have been more
cheerful. Here, as elsewhere, the evil of the times was pressing upon
men and disheartening them from labour. Farms lying barren, ill-will
between proprietor and tenant, between tenant and hind, departure of
the tillers of the soil to rot in towns that have no need of them--of
such things did honest Pammenter speak, with many a sturdy malediction
of landlords and land-laws, whereat Sidney smiled, not unsympathetic.

Danbury Hill, rising thick-wooded to the village church, which is
visible for miles around, with stretches of heath about its lower
slopes, with its far prospects over the sunny country, was the pleasant
end of a pleasant drive. Mrs. Pammenter and her children (seven of
them, unhappily) gave the party a rough, warm-hearted welcome. Ha! how
good it was to smell the rooms through which the pure air breathed
freely! All the front of the house was draped with purple clematis; in
the garden were sun-flowers and hollyhocks and lowly plants
innumerable; on the red and lichened tiles p