anches and their purple tracery of
twigs, with a suggestion of infinite depth behind, show through the
rents in the leafy covering. There are deep green trees--the amateur
nature-lover fancies they may be yews--with their dense warm foliage
arranged in horizontal masses, like the clouds low down in a sunset; and
certain other evergreens, one particularly, with a bluish-green covering
of upstanding needles, are intensely conspicuous among the flame tints
around. On a distant church tower, and nearer, disputing the possession
of a gabled red house with a glowing creeper, is some ivy; and never is
the perennial green of ivy so delightful as it is now, when all else is
alight with the sombre fire of the sunset of the year....

The amateur nature-lover proceeds over the down, appreciating all this
as hard as he can appreciate, and anon gazing up at the grey and white
cloud shapes melting slowly from this form to that, and showing lakes,
and wide expanses, and serene distances of blue between their gaps. And
then he looks round him for a zoological item. Underfoot the grass of
the down is recovering from the summer drought and growing soft and
green again, and plentiful little flattened snail shells lie about, and
here and there a late harebell still nods in the breeze. Yonder bolts a
rabbit, and then something whizzes by the amateur nature-lover's ear.

They shoot here somewhere, he remembers suddenly; and then looking
round, in a palpitating state, is reassured by the spectacle of a lone
golfer looming over the brow of the down, and gesticulating black and
weird against the sky. The Londoner, with an abrupt affectation of
nonchalance, flings himself flat upon his back, and so remains
comparatively safe until the golfer has passed. These golfers are
strange creatures, rabbit-coloured, except that many are bright red
about the middle, and they repel and yet are ever attracted by a devil
in the shape of a little white ball, which leads them on through toothed
briars, sharp furzes, pricking goss, and thorns; cursing the thing,
weeping even, and anon laughing at their own foolish rambling;
muttering, heeding no one to the right or left of their
career,--demented creatures, as though these balls were their souls,
that they ever sought to lose, and ever repented losing. And silent,
ever at the heel of each, is a familiar spirit, an eerie human hedgehog,
all set about with walking-sticks, a thing like a cylindrical
umbrella-stand