came to me from outside where the shadows were weaving their
eternal tissue of dreams upon the garden floor. Moreover, there was no
trace in it of the rough quality one might naturally have expected, and,
now that I saw the full face of the speaker for the first time, I noted
with something like a start that the deep, gentle eyes seemed far more
in keeping with the timbre of the voice than with the rough and very
countrified appearance of the clothes and manner. His voice set pleasant
waves of sound in motion towards me, and the actual words, if I remember
rightly, were--

"You are a stranger in these parts?" or "Is not this part of the country
strange to you?"

There was no "sir," nor any outward and visible sign of the deference
usually paid by real country folk to the town-bred visitor, but in its
place a gentleness, almost a sweetness, of polite sympathy that was far
more of a compliment than either.

I answered that I was wandering on foot through a part of the country
that was wholly new to me, and that I was surprised not to find a place
of such idyllic loveliness marked upon my map.

"I have lived here all my life," he said, with a sigh, "and am never
tired of coming back to it again."

"Then you no longer live in the immediate neighbourhood?"

"I have moved," he answered briefly, adding after a pause in which his
eyes seemed to wander wistfully to the wealth of blossoms beyond the
window; "but I am almost sorry, for nowhere else have I found the
sunshine lie so warmly, the flowers smell so sweetly, or the winds and
streams make such tender music. . . ."

His voice died away into a thin stream of sound that lost itself in the
rustle of the rose-leaves climbing in at the window, for he turned his
head away from me as he spoke and looked out into the garden. But it was
impossible to conceal my surprise, and I raised my eyes in frank
astonishment on hearing so poetic an utterance from such a figure of a
man, though at the same time realising that it was not in the least
inappropriate, and that, in fact, no other sort of expression could have
properly been expected from him.

"I am sure you are right," I answered at length, when it was clear he
had ceased speaking; "or there is something of enchantment here--of real
fairy-like enchantment--that makes me think of the visions of childhood
days, before one knew anything of--of--"

I had been oddly drawn into his vein of speech, some inner force
compelling me