was to him full of wonder and of sweet
sights and sounds. He loved to climb the down, and lie feasting his
eyes on the rich plain, spread out like a map; the farms in their
closes, the villages from which went up the smoke at evening, the
distant blue hills, like the hills of heaven, the winding river, and
the lake that lay in the winter twilight like a shield of silver. He
loved to see the sun flash on the windows of the houses so distant
that they could not themselves be seen, but only sparkled like stars.
He loved to loiter on the edge of the steep hanging woods in summer,
to listen to the humming of the flies deep in the brake, and to catch
a sight of lonely flowers; he loved the scent of the wind blowing
softly out of the copse, and he wondered what the trees said to each
other, when they stood still and happy in the heat of midday. He
loved, too, the silent night, full of stars, when the wood that topped
the hill lay black against the sky. The whole world seemed to him to
be full of a mysterious and beautiful life of which he could never
quite catch the secret; these innocent flowers, these dreaming trees
seemed, as it were, to hold him smiling at arm's length, while they
guarded their joy from him. The birds and the beasts seemed to him to
have less of this quiet joy, for they were fearful and careful,
working hard to find a living, and dreading the sight of man; but
sometimes in the fragrant eventide the nightingale would say a little
of what was in her heart. "Yes," Paul would say to himself, "it is
like that."

One other chief delight the boy had; he knew the magic of sound,
which spoke to his heart in a way that it speaks to but few; the
sounds of the earth gave up their sweets to him; the musical fluting
of owls, the liquid notes of the cuckoo, the thin pipe of dancing
flies, the mournful creaking of the cider-press, the horn of the
oxherd wound far off on the hill, the tinkling of sheep-bells--of all
these he knew the notes; and not only these, but the rhythmical swing
of the scythes sweeping through the grass, the flails heard through
the hot air from the barn, the clinking of the anvil in the village
forge, the bubble of the stream through the weir--all these had a tale
to tell him. Sometimes, for days together, he would hum to himself a
few notes that pleased him by their sweet cadence, and he would string
together some simple words to them, and sing them to himself with
gentle content. The song of the