e passion and the call of the divine morning were high in my blood.

Earth to earth! That was the frank note, the joyous summons of the day;
and they could not but jar and seem artificial, these human discussions
and pretences, when boon Nature, reticent no more, was singing that
full-throated song of hers that thrills and claims control of every
fibre. The air was wine; the moist earth-smell, wine; the lark's song,
the wafts from the cow-shed at top of the field, the pant and smoke of
a distant train,--all were wine,--or song, was it? or odour, this
unity they all blended into? I had no words then to describe it, that
earth-effluence of which I was so conscious; nor, indeed, have I
found words since. I ran sideways, shouting; I dug glad heels into the
squelching soil; I splashed diamond showers from puddles with a stick;
I hurled clods skywards at random, and presently I somehow found myself
singing. The words were mere nonsense,--irresponsible babble; the tune
was an improvisation, a weary, unrhythmic thing of rise and fall: and
yet it seemed to me a genuine utterance, and just at that moment the
one thing fitting and right and perfect. Humanity would have rejected it
with scorn, Nature, everywhere singing in the same key, recognised and
accepted it without a flicker of dissent.

All the time the hearty wind was calling to me companionably from where
he swung and bellowed in the tree-tops. "Take me for guide to-day," he
seemed to plead. "Other holidays you have tramped it in the track of the
stolid, unswerving sun; a belated truant, you have dragged a weary foot
homeward with only a pale, expressionless moon for company. To-day
why not I, the trickster, the hypocrite? I, who whip round corners and
bluster, relapse and evade, then rally and pursue! I can lead you the
best and rarest dance of any; for I am the strong capricious one, the
lord of misrule, and I alone am irresponsible and unprincipled, and obey
no law." And for me, I was ready enough to fall in with the fellow's
humour; was not this a whole holiday? So we sheered off together,
arm-in-arm, so to speak; and with fullest confidence I took the jigging,
thwartwise course my chainless pilot laid for me.

A whimsical comrade I found him, ere he had done with me. Was it in
jest, or with some serious purpose of his own, that he brought me plump
upon a pair of lovers, silent, face to face o'er a discreet unwinking
stile? As a rule this sort of thing struck me as th