een; forgets that he
gazes upon a battlefield awaiting savage armies, which will fill high
Summer with ceaseless war, to strew the fair earth with slain. He
suffers dead Winter to bury her dead, seeks the wine of life that brims
in the chalices of Spring flowers: plucks blade and blossom, and is a
child again, if Time has so dealt with him that for a little he can thus
far retrace his steps; and, lastly, he turns once more to the Mother he
has forgotten, to find that she has not forgotten him. The whisper of
her passing in a greenwood glade is the murmur of waters invisible and
of life unseen; the scent of her garment comes sweet on the bloom of the
blackthorn; high heaven and lowly forget-me-not alike mirror the blue of
her wonderful eyes; and the gleam of the sunshine on rippling rivers and
dreaming clouds reflects the gold of her hair. She moves a queen who,
passing through one fair corner of her world-wide kingdom, joys in it.
She, the sovereign of the universe, reigns here too, over the buds and
the birds, and the happy, unconsidered life of weald and wold. Each busy
atom and unfolding frond is dear to her; each warm nest and hidden
burrow inspires like measure of her care and delight; and at this time,
if ever, we may think of Nature as forgetting Death for one magic
moment, as sharing the wide joy of her wakening world, as greeting the
young mother of the year's hopes, as pressing to her bosom the babes of
Spring with many a sunny smile and rainbowed tear.

Through the woods in Teign Valley passed Clement Hicks and his
sweetheart about a fortnight after Lawyer Ford had been laid to rest in
Chagford Churchyard. Chris talked about her brother and the great
enterprise he had determined upon. She supported Will and spoke with
sanguine words of his future; but Clement regarded the project
differently.

"To lease Newtake Farm is a fool's trick," he said. "Everybody knows the
last experiments there. The place has been empty for ten months, and
those who touched it in recent years only broke their hearts and wasted
their substance."

"Well, they weern't such men as Will. Theer's a fitness about it, tu;
for Will's awn gran'faither prospered at Newtake; an' if he could get a
living, another may. Mother do like the thought of Will being there
somehow."

"I know it. The sentiment of the thing has rather blinded her natural
keen judgment. Curious that I should criticise sentiment in another
person; but it 's like my cran