en Madge was dead.

Absalom went back to the railway and drank harder than ever. It was
observed that he drank now by himself and for drinking's sake, whereas
before he had only been fond of liquor with company. After a year he
found his way back home. Madge was forgotten, and he easily got work.
Likely young men are not so common on farms: strict inquiries are rarely
made.

The last that was heard of him appeared in the local newspaper:--

"DRUNK AND DISORDERLY.--Absalom White was brought up in custody, charged
with obstructing the road while in a state of intoxication. Fined five
shillings and seven-and-six costs."

PART II.

_THE COMING OF SUMMER._

The June sky is of the deepest blue when seen above the fresh foliage of
the oaks in the morning before the sun has filled the heavens with his
meridian light. To see the blue at its best it needs something to form a
screen so that the azure may strike the eye with its fulness
undiminished by its own beauty; for if you look at the open sky such a
breadth of the same hue tones itself down. But let the eye rise upwards
along a wall of oak spray, then at the rim the rich blue is thick, quite
thick, opaque, and steeped in luscious colour. Unless, indeed, upon the
high downs,--there the June sky is too deep even for the brilliance of
the light, and requires no more screen than the hand put up to shade the
eyes. These level plains by the Thames are different, and here I like to
see the sky behind and over an oak.

About Surbiton the oaks come out into leaf earlier than in many places;
this spring[2] there were oak-leaves appearing on April 24, yet so
backward are some of them that, while all the rest were green, there
were two in the hedge of a field by the Ewell road still dark within ten
days of June. They looked dark because their trunks and boughs were
leafless against a background of hawthorn, elm, and other trees in full
foliage, the clover flowering under them, and May bloom on the hedge.
They were black as winter, and even now, on the 1st of June, the leaves
are not fully formed. The trees flowered in great perfection this
spring; many oaks were covered with their green pendants, and they hung
from the sycamores. Except the chestnuts, whose bloom can hardly be
overlooked, the flowering of the trees is but little noticed; the elm is
one of the earliest, and becomes ruddy--it is as early as the catkins on
the hazel; willow, aspen, oak, sycamore, ash,