, the violet in the hedge of the vale, the thyme on
the wind-swept downs, they were as fresh this year as last, as dear
to-day as twenty years since, even dearer, for they grow now, as it
were, in the earth we have made for them of our hopes, our prayers, our
emotions, our thoughts.

Sketch-book upon sketch-book in Alere's room was full of wild flowers,
drawn as he had found them in the lanes and woods at Coombe Oaks--by the
footpaths, by the lake and the lesser ponds, on the hills--as he had
found them, not formed into an artificial design, not torn up by the
roots, or cut and posed for the occasion--exactly as they were when his
eye caught sight of them. A difficult thing to do, but Alere did it.

In printing engravings of flowers the illustrated magazines usually
make one of two mistakes; either the flower is printed without any
surroundings or background, and looks thin, quite without interest,
however cleverly drawn, or else it is presented with a heavy black pall
of ink which dabs it out altogether.

These flowers the Editor bought eagerly, and the little landscapes. From
a stile, beside a rick, through a gap in a hedge, odd, unexpected
places, Alere caught views of the lake, the vale, the wood, groups of
trees, old houses, and got them in his magical way on a few square
inches of paper. They were very valuable for book illustration. They
were absolutely true to nature and fact.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXVIII.

PERHAPS the reason Alere never took to colours was because of his
inherent and unswerving truthfulness of character. Genuine to a degree,
he could not make believe--could not deceive--could not masquerade in a
dress-coat.

Now, most of the landscape-painting in vogue to-day is nature in a
dress-coat.

In a whole saloon of water colours, in a whole Academy, or Grosvenor
Gallery you shall hardly find three works that represent any real scene
in the fields.

I have walked about the fields a good deal in my brief, fretful hour,
yet I have never seen anything resembling the strange apparitions that
are hung on these walls every spring. Apparitions--optical illusions,
lit up with watery, greenish, ghastly, ghost-light--nothing like them on
earth I swear, and I suspect not in Heaven or Hades.

Touched-up designs: a tree taken from one place, a brook from another, a
house from another--_and mixed to order_, like a prescription by the
chemist--xv. grs. grass, 3 dr. stile,