ome
discarded boots of my own were produced, but they were quite different
from the old boot of the outer air. These home-kept old boots were
lovely in their way, hoary with mould running into the most exquisite
tints of glaucophane and blue-grey, but it was a different way
altogether from that of the wild boot.

A friend says, that these boots are cast away by tramps. People, he
states, give your tramp old boots and hats in great profusion, and the
modesty of the recipient drives him to these picturesque and secluded
spots to effect the necessary change. But no nature-lover has ever
observed the tramp or tramp family in the act of changing their clothes,
and since there are even reasons to suppose that their garments are not
detachable, it seems preferable to leave the wayside boot as a pleasant
flavouring of mystery to our ramble. Another point, which also goes to
explode this tramp theory, is that these countryside boots _never occur
in pairs_, as any observer of natural history can testify....

So our Cockney Jefferies proceeds, presently coming upon a cinder path.
They use cinders a lot about Sutton, to make country paths with; it
gives you an unexpected surprise the first time it occurs. You drop
suddenly out of a sweetly tangled lane into a veritable bit of the Black
Country, and go on with loathing in your soul for your fellow-creatures.
There is also an abundance of that last product of civilisation, barbed
wire. Oh that I were Gideon! with thorns and briers of the wilderness
would I teach these elders of Sutton! But a truce to dark thoughts!

We take our last look at the country from the open down above Sutton.
Blue hills beyond blue hills recede into the remote distance; from
Banstead Down one can see into Oxfordshire. Windsor Castle is in minute
blue silhouette to the left, and to the right and nearer is the Crystal
Palace. And closer, clusters red-roofed Sutton and its tower, then
Cheam, with its white spire, and further is Ewell, set in a variegated
texture of autumn foliage. Water gleams--a silver thread--at Ewell, and
the sinking sun behind us catches a window here and there, and turns it
into an eye of flame. And so to Sutton station and home to Cockneydom
once more.

FROM AN OBSERVATORY

It will be some time yet before the rising of the moon. Looking down
from the observatory one can see the pathways across the park dotted out
in yellow lamps, each with a fringe of dim green; and further o