impudence of the city arab. A tall
and portly gentleman from town once chanced to visit this 'coombe-bottom'
on business, and strolled down the 'street' in all the glory of
shining boots, large gold watch-chain, black coat and high hat, all
the pomp of Regent-street; doubtless imagining that his grandeur
astonished the rustics. A brown young rascal, however, looking him
up--he was a tall man--with an air of intelligent criticism, audibly
remarked, 'Hum! He be very well up to his ankles--and then a' falls
off!'

That evening was one of the most beautiful I remember. We all sat in
the garden at Lucketts' Place till ten o'clock; it was still light and
it seemed impossible to go indoors. There was a seat under a sycamore
tree with honeysuckle climbing over the bars of the back; the spot was
near the orchard, but on slightly higher ground. From our feet the
meadow sloped down to the distant brook, the murmur of whose stream as
it fell over a bay could be just heard. Northwards the stars were
pale, the sun seems so little below the horizon there that the glow of
the sunset and the glow of the dawn nearly meet. But southwards shone
the dull red star of summer--Antares, seen while the wheat ripens and
the ruddy and golden tints come upon the fruits. Then nightly
describing a low curve he looks down upon the white shimmering corn,
and carries the mind away to the burning sands and palms of the far
south. In the light and colour and brilliance of an English summer we
sometimes seem very near those tropical lands.

So still was it that we heard an apple fall in the orchard, thud on
the sward, blighted perhaps and ripe before its time. Under the trees
as the months went on there would rise heaps of the windfalls
collected there to wait for the cider-mill. The mill was the property
of two or three of the village folk, a small band of adventurers now
grown old, who every autumn went round from farm to farm grinding the
produce of the various orchards. They sometimes poured a quantity of
the acid juice into the mill to sharpen it, as cutting a lemon will
sharpen a knife. The great press, with its unwieldy screw and levers,
squeezed the liquor from the cut-up apples in the horse-hair bags: a
cumbersome apparatus, but not without interest; for surely so rude an
engine must date back far in the past. The old fellows who brought it
and put it up with slow deliberative motions were far, far past the
joy with which all the children about