in the hall, accenting with its slow
sardonic tick the silence of the sleeping house, marked a quarter to
five, as he undid the heavy old-fashioned fastenings of the door, the
oaken bar, the iron bolts and chains, and let himself out.

He let himself out; but then he stood still for a minute on the
terrace, arrested by the exquisite shock of the wonderful early air:
the wonderful light, keen air, a fabric woven of elfin filaments, the
breathings of green lives: an aether distilled of secret essences, in
the night, by the earth and the sea,--for there was the sea's tang, as
well as the earth's balm, there was the bitter-sweet of the sea and the
earth at one.

He stood for a minute, stopped by the exquisite shock of it; and then
he set forth for an aimless morning ramble.

The dew clung in big iridescent crystals to the grass, where the sheep
were already wide-awake and eager at their breakfasts; it gleamed like
sprinkled rubies on the scarlet petals of the poppies, and like
fairies' draughts of yellow wine in the enamelled hollows of the
buttercups; on the brown earth of the pathways, where the long shadows
were purple, it lay white like hoar-frost. The shadows were still
long, the sunbeams still almost level; the sun shone gently, as through
an imperceptible thin veil, gilding with pinkish gold the surfaces it
touched--glossy leaves, and the rough bark of tree-trunks, and the
points of the spears of grass. A thicker veil, a gauze of pearl and
silver, dimmed the blue of the sea, and blurred the architecture of the
cliffs. On the sea's edge lay a long grey cloud, a long, low, soft
cloud, flat, like a band of soft grey velvet. The cloud was grey
indeed; but (as if prismatic fires were smouldering there) its grey
held in solution all the colours of the spectrum, so that you could
discern elusive rose-tints, fugitive greens, translucent reflections of
amethyst and amber.

The morning was inexpressibly calm and peaceful--yet it was busy with
sound and with movement. Rooks, those sanctimonious humbugs, circled
overhead, cawing thieves' warnings, that had the twang of sermons, to
other rooks, out of sight in neighbouring seed-fields. Lapwings,
humbugs too, but humbugs in a prettier cause, started from the
shrubberies where their eggs were hidden, and fluttered lamely towards
the open. Sparrows innumerable were holding their noisy, high-spirited
disputations; blackbirds were repeating and repeating that deep
melodiou