neven tufts of grass, the dainty "ragged robin"
sprays its rose-pink blossoms contrastingly against masses of snowy
star-wort and wild strawberry,--the hedges lean close together, as
though accustomed to conceal the shy confidences of young lovers,--and
from the fields beyond, the glad singing of countless skylarks, soaring
one after the other into the clear pure air, strikes a wave of repeated
melody from point to point of the visible sky. All among the delicate or
deep indentures of the coast, where the ocean creeps softly inland with
a caressing murmur, or scoops out caverns for itself among the rocks
with perpetual roar and dash of foam, the glamour of the green
extends,--the "lane runs down to meet the sea, carrying with it its
garlands of blossoms, its branches of verdure, and all the odour and
freshness of the woodlands and meadows, and when at last it drops to a
conclusion in some little sandy bay or sparkling weir, it leaves an
impression of melody on the soul like the echo of a sweet song just
sweetly sung. High up the lanes run;--low down on the shoreline they
come to an end,--and the wayfarer, pacing along at the summit of their
devious windings, can hear the plash of the sea below him as he
walks,--the little tender laughing plash if the winds are calm and the
day is fair,--the angry thud and boom of the billows if a storm is
rising. These bye-roads, of which there are so many along the
Somersetshire coast, are often very lonely,--they are dangerous to
traffic, as no two ordinary sized vehicles can pass each other
conveniently within so narrow a compass,--and in summer especially they
are haunted by gypsies, "pea-pickers," and ill-favoured men and women of
the "tramp" species, slouching along across country from Bristol to
Minehead, and so over Countisbury Hill into Devon. One such
questionable-looking individual there was, who,--in a golden afternoon
of July, when the sun was beginning to decline towards the west,--paused
in his slow march through the dust, which even in the greenest of hill
and woodland ways is bound to accumulate thickly after a fortnight's
lack of rain,--and with a sigh of fatigue, sat down at the foot of a
tree to rest. He was an old man, with a thin weary face which was
rendered more gaunt and haggard-looking by a ragged grey moustache and
ugly stubble beard of some ten days' growth, and his attire suggested
that he might possibly be a labourer dismissed from farm work for the
heinous