zealot, and conceives it his mission to weed out the small
superstitions of the countryside and plant exact information in their
stead. He comes from up the country--a thin, clean-shaven town-bred
man, whose black habit and tall hat, though considerably bronzed,
refuse to harmonise with the scenery amid which they move. His speech
is formal and slightly dogmatic, and in argument he always gets the
better of me. Therefore, feeling sure it will annoy him excessively, I
am going to put him into this book. He laid himself open the other day
to this stroke of revenge, by telling me a story; and since he loves
precision, I will be very precise about the circumstances.

At the foot of my garden, and hidden from my window by the clipt
box hedge, runs Sanctuary Lane, along which I see the heads of the
villagers moving to church on Sunday mornings. But in returning they
invariably keep to the raised footpath on the far side, that brings
the women's skirts and men's smallclothes into view. I have made many
attempts to discover how this distinction arose, and why it is adhered
to, but never found a satisfying explanation. It is the rule, however.

From the footpath a high bank (where now the primroses have given
place to stitchwort and ragged robin) rises to an orchard; so steeply
that the apple-blossom drops into the lane. Just now the petals lie
thickly there in the early morning, to be trodden into dust as soon
as the labourers fare to work. Beyond and above the orchard comes a
stretch of pastureland and then a young oak-coppice, the fringe of a
great estate, with a few Scotch firs breaking the sky-line on top of
all. The head gamekeeper of this estate tells me we shall have a hot
summer, because the oak this year was in leaf before the ash, though
only by a day. The ash was foliating on the 29th of April, the oak
on the 28th. Up there the blue-bells lie in sheets of mauve, and the
cuckoo is busy. I rarely see him; but his three notes fill the hot
noon and evening. When he spits (says the gamekeeper again) it is time
to be sheep-shearing. My talk with the gamekeeper is usually held at
six in the morning, when he comes down the lane and I am stepping
across to test the water in Scarlet's Well.

This well bubbles up under a low vault scooped in the bank by the
footpath and hung with hart's-tongue ferns. It has two founts, close
together; but whereas one of them oozes only, the other is bubbling
perennially, and, as near as I hav