, motionless upon the blue
heavens, as if still frozen by the icy fingers of a December night,
were some aerial transparencies of aqueous vapour, amethystine in
colour, with edges of white foam. In the east, obscured, but not
concealed, by grey mist, hung the crimson orb of the sun. From it
faint rays shot forth, touching the clouds beneath, which, roused, so
to speak, out of sleep, drifted lethargically in a southerly direction.

"Underneath the young grey dawn
A multitude of dense, white, fleecy clouds
Were wandering in thick flocks, . . .
Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind."

Desmond drew in his breath, sighing with purest delight. From the
lawns encompassing the house his eyes strayed into a glade of bracken,
gold gleaming through silver--a glade shadowed by noble oaks and
beeches, with one birch tree in the middle of it surpassingly graceful.
Upon this each delicate bough and spray were outlined sharply against
the sky. Beyond the glade stretched the moor, rugged, bleak, and
treeless, sloping sharply upward. Beyond the moor lay the
Forest--belts of firs darkly purple; and flanking these the irregular
masses of oaks and beeches, varying in tint from palest lavender to
rose and brown, some still in shadow, some in ever-increasing glow of
sunlight; not one the same, and each in itself containing a thousand
differing forms, yet all harmonious parts of the resplendent whole.

"I'm so glad yon like my home," said John. "Shall we have a gallop
before breakfast? It's only a white frost."

So they galloped away into fairyland, returning with mortal appetites
to the oak-panelled dining-hall, whence a Verney had ridden forth to
join his kinsman, Sir Edmund, in arms for the King upon the distant
field of Edge Hill. After breakfast the boys explored the quaint old
house; and John showed Caesar the twenty-bore gun, and promised his
guest much rabbit-shooting, and two days' hunting, at least, with the
New Forest Hounds, and some pike-fishing, and possibly an encounter
with a big grayling--which, later, the boys saw walloping about in the
Test above Broadlands--a splendid fish, once hooked by John, and
lost--a three-pounder, of course.

O golden age! You will never forget that Christmas--will you, John?
If you live to be Prime Minister of England, the memory of those first
days alone with your friend will remain green when the colour has been
sucked by Time out of everything else. Fifty years henc