gh midsummer, the afternoon hot and drowsy with
scents of mown hay; and between the rattle of the fast trains it
seemed that we, native denizens of the Duchy, careless of
observation or applause, were executing a _tour de force_ in that
fine indolence which has been charged as a fault against us. That we
halted at every station goes without saying. Few sidings--however
inconsiderable or, as it might seem, fortuitous--escaped the
flattery of our prolonged sojourn. We ambled, we paused, almost
we dallied with the butterflies lazily afloat over the meadow-sweet
and cow-parsley beside the line; we exchanged gossip with
station-masters, and received the congratulations of signalmen on the
extraordinary spell of fine weather. It did not matter.
Three market-women, a pedlar, and a local policeman made up with me
the train's complement of passengers. I gathered that their business
could wait; and as for mine--well, a Norman porch is by this time
accustomed to waiting.

I will not deny that in the end I dozed at intervals in my empty
smoking compartment; but wish to make it clear that I came on the
Vision (as I will call it) with eyes open, and that it left me
staring, wide-awake as Macbeth.

Let me describe the scene. To the left of the line as you travel
westward there lies a long grassy meadow on a gentle acclivity, set
with three or four umbrageous oaks and backed by a steep plantation
of oak saplings. At the foot of the meadow, close alongside the
line, runs a brook, which is met at the meadow's end by a second
brook which crosses under the permanent way through a culvert.
The united waters continue the course of the first brook, beside the
line, and maybe for half a mile farther; but, a few yards below their
junction, are partly dammed by the masonry of a bridge over which a
country lane crosses the railway; and this obstacle spreads them into
a pool some fifteen or twenty feet wide, overgrown with the leaves of
the arrow-head, and fringed with water-flags and the flowering rush.

Now I seldom pass this spot without sparing a glance for it; first
because of the pool's still beauty, and secondly because many rabbits
infest the meadow below the coppice, and among them for two or three
years was a black fellow whom I took an idle delight in recognising.
(He is gone now, and his place knows him no more; yet I continue to
hope for sight of a black rabbit just there.) But this afternoon I
looked out with special inter