would; sometimes he would help the old gardener,
when there was work to be done; for he loved to serve others, and was
content with toil if it was sweetened with love; but often he rambled by
himself for hours together; he cared little for company, because the
earth 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 th