ul and very bad. It
was bad from the point of view that the fisher-farmers of the island
looked upon it as a sort of "no man's land," and never favoured it by
spreading donkey-cart loads of pebbles or broken granite to fill up the
holes trodden in by cows in wet weather, or the tracks made by carts
laden with vraick, the sea-weed they collected for manuring their potato
and parsnep fields. Consequently, in bad seasons Vince said it was
"squishy," and Mike that it was "squashy." But in fine summer weather
it was beautiful indeed, for Nature seemed to have made up her mind that
it was nonsense for a roadway to be made there to act like a scar on the
landscape, just to accommodate a few people who wanted to bring up
sea-weed, sand and fish from the shore, and harness donkeys to rough
carts to do the work when they might more easily have done it themselves
by making a rough windlass, such as they had over their wells, and
dragging all they wanted directly up the cliff face to the top--a plan
which would have done in fifty yards what the donkeys had to go round
nearly half a mile to achieve. As to the road being kept up solely
because old Joe Daygo had a cottage down in a notch in the granite walls
overlooking the sea, that seemed to be absurd.

Consequently, Nature went to work regularly every year to do away with
that road, and she set all her children to help. The gorse bushes hung
from the sides, thrusting out their prickly sprays covered with orange
and yellow blossom and encroached all they could; the heather sprouted
and slowly crept here and there, in company with a lovely fine grass
that would have made a lover of smooth lawns frantic with envy. Over
the heath, ling, and furze the dodder wreathed and wove its delicate
tangle, and the thrift raised its lavender heads to nod with
satisfaction at the way in which all the plants and wild shrubs were
doing their work.

But there were two things which left all the rest behind, and did by far
the most to bring the crooked lane back to beauty. They laughed at the
two brionies, black and white; for though they made a glorious show,
with their convolvulus and deeply cut leaves, and sent forth strands of
wonderfully rapid growth to run over the sturdy blackthorn, which
produced such splendid sloes, and then hung down festoons of glossy
leaves into the lane that quite put the more slow-growing ivy to the
blush, still these lovely trailing festoons died back in the winte