s.

I remember how the slow evening shadows drew over the quiet fields. The
sunlight slowly faded to a mist of gold, into which the great trees
thrust timorous, shy fingers, and these gradually widened, until, at
last, the whole horizon bowed into the twilight.

Across the field there could be heard the voice of the river, a
furtive, desolate hoarseness in the dusk. The cows in the far fields
had long ago wandered home to be milked, scarcely a bird moved in the
high silences, the gnats had hidden themselves away in the deep, rugged
bark of the trees, and, through the dimness, the heavy beetles were
hurling like stones, and dropping and rising again in a laborious
flight.

III

He could remember that he had wept to be allowed go to school. Even
more vivid was his recollection of the persuasive and persistent tears
which he had shed to be allowed to stay at home.

Most of the joys of school were exhausted after he had submitted to one
hour of dreary discipline.--To be compelled to sit still when every
inch of one's being clamoured to move about; to have to stand up and
stare at a blackboard upon which meaningless white scrawls were
perpetually being drawn, and as perpetually being wiped out to a
master's meaningless, monotonous verbal accompaniment; to have to join
in a chant which began with "a, b, c," and droned steadily through a
complexity of sounds to a ridiculously inadequate "z"--such things
became desperately boring. One was not even let go to sleep, and if
one wept from sheer ennui, then one was clouted. School, he shortly
decided, was not worth anybody's while, but he also discovered that a
torment had commenced which was not by any artifice to be evaded.

Along the road to school there ran a succession of meadows--the path
was really a footway through fields--and how not to stray into these
meadows was a problem demanding the entire of one's attention.
Sometimes a rabbit bolted almost from under one's feet--it flapped away
through the grass, and bobbed up and down in a great hurry. Then his
heart filled with envy. He said to himself--

"That rabbit is not going to school: if it was it wouldn't run so
quickly."

It was paltry comfort to hurl a wad of grass after it.

Through most of the journey there was an immense, lazy bee with a bass
voice, and he droned defiance three feet away from one's cap which
almost jolted to be put over him. He seemed to understand that at such
an hour he was not in any