e said, 'I don't know as I can make much of a show of reasons; but I'm
going. Did you notice anything special about the weather, or--or that,
this morning, Parson?' I told him I had only noticed that it was a very
sweet, clear, happy sort of a morning. 'That's just it, Parson,' he
said; 'sweet and clear and clean it is; and I don't believe there's any
sweeter, cleaner thing than this morning on my farm--no, not in heaven,
Parson,' he said. 'And that's why I'm going back Home to London; to
Battersea; that's where I lived before I came here.'

"I waited for him to tell me more, and presently he said: 'You know,
Parson, I was never what you might call a drunkard, not even at Home,
where drinking's the regular thing. But I used to get through a tidy lot
of liquor, one way and another, and most generally two or three pints
too many of a Saturday night. Then, of a Sunday morning, the job was
waiting for the pubs to open. Nobody in our street ever did much else of
a Sunday. I suppose you don't happen to have ever been down the Falcon
Road of a Sunday morning, Parson? No? Well, you see, the street's a kind
of market all Saturday night, up till long after midnight--costers'
barrows with flare-lights, gin-shops full to the door, and all the fun
of the fair--all the fun of the fair. Mothers and fathers, lads and
sweethearts, babies in prams, and toddlers in blue plush and white wool;
you see them all crowding the bars up till midnight, and they see--well,
they see Battersea through a kind of a bright gaze. Then comes Sunday,
and a dry throat, and waiting for the pubs to open. The streets are all
a litter of dirty newspaper and cabbage-stumps, and worse; and the air's
kind of sick and stale.'

"At that Hare stopped talking, and looked out over the prairie on that
June morning. Presently he went on again: 'Well, Parson, when I came out
here this morning--I haven't tasted beer for over three years--I sat
down and looked around; and, somehow, I thought I'd never seen anything
so fine in all my life; so sweet and clean; the air so bright, like dew;
and green--well, look at it, far as your eye can carry! And all this
round, away to the bluff there, and the creek this way; it's mine, every
foot of it. Well, after a bit, I was looking over there to the church,
and what d'ye think I saw, all through the pretty sunlight? I saw the
Falcon Road, a pub I know there, and a streak of sunshine running over
the wire blinds into the bar, all frowsy