al fear, even while they sidled closer to their mothers. A skylark
springing suddenly from the grass a few yards from his feet made him
stop short once and stand looking upward and listening. Who could pass
by a skylark at five o'clock on a summer's morning--the little, heavenly
light-heart circling and wheeling, showering down diamonds, showering
down pearls, from its tiny pulsating, trilling throat?

"Do you know why they sing like that? It is because all but the joy of
things has been kept hidden from them. They knew nothing but life and
flight and mating, and the gold of the sun. So they sing." That she had
once said.

He listened until the jewelled rain seemed to have fallen into his soul.
Then he went on his way smiling as he knew he had never smiled in his
life before. He knew it because he realised that he had never before
felt the same vigorous, light normality of spirit, the same sense of
being as other men. It was as though something had swept a great clear
space about him, and having room for air he breathed deep and was glad
of the commonest gifts of being.

The bathing pool had been the greatest pleasure of his uncared-for
boyhood. No one knew which long passed away Mount Dunstan had made it.
The oldest villager had told him that it had "allus ben there," even in
his father's time. Since he himself had known it he had seen that it was
kept at its best.

Its dark blue depths reflected in their pellucid clearness the water
plants growing at its edge and the enclosing shrubs and trees. The turf
bordering it was velvet-thick and green, and a few flag-steps led down
to the water. Birds came there to drink and bathe and preen and dress
their feathers. He knew there were often nests in the bushes--sometimes
the nests of nightingales who filled the soft darkness or moonlight of
early June with the wonderfulness of nesting song. Sometimes a straying
fawn poked in a tender nose, and after drinking delicately stole away,
as if it knew itself a trespasser.

To undress and plunge headlong into the dark sapphire water was a
rapturous thing. He swam swiftly and slowly by turns, he floated,
looking upward at heaven's blue, listening to birds' song and inhaling
all the fragrance of the early day. Strength grew in him and life pulsed
as the water lapped his limbs. He found himself thinking with pleasure
of a long walk he intended to take to see a farmer he must talk to about
his hop gardens; he found himself thinking w