said Ashurst shortly, and folding up his pouch, walked
on.

"Lovin'-hearted!" Yes! And what was he doing? What were his
intentions--as they say towards this loving-hearted girl? The thought
dogged him, wandering through fields bright with buttercups, where the
little red calves were feeding, and the swallows flying high. Yes, the
oaks were before the ashes, brown-gold already; every tree in different
stage and hue. The cuckoos and a thousand birds were singing; the little
streams were very bright. The ancients believed in a golden age, in the
garden of the Hesperides!... A queen wasp settled on his sleeve. Each
queen wasp killed meant two thousand fewer wasps to thieve the apples
which would grow from that blossom in the orchard; but who, with love
in his heart, could kill anything on a day like this? He entered a field
where a young red bull was feeding. It seemed to Ashurst that he looked
like Joe. But the young bull took no notice of this visitor, a little
drunk himself, perhaps, on the singing and the glamour of the golden
pasture, under his short legs. Ashurst crossed out unchallenged to the
hillside above the stream. From that slope a for mounted to its crown of
rocks. The ground there was covered with a mist of bluebells, and nearly
a score of crab-apple trees were in full bloom. He threw himself down on
the grass. The change from the buttercup glory and oak-goldened glamour
of the fields to this ethereal beauty under the grey for filled him with
a sort of wonder; nothing the same, save the sound of running water
and the songs of the cuckoos. He lay there a long time, watching the
sunlight wheel till the crab-trees threw shadows over the bluebells, his
only companions a few wild bees. He was not quite sane, thinking of that
morning's kiss, and of to-night under the apple tree. In such a spot
as this, fauns and dryads surely lived; nymphs, white as the crab-apple
blossom, retired within those trees; fauns, brown as the dead bracken,
with pointed ears, lay in wait for them. The cuckoos were still calling
when he woke, there was the sound of running water; but the sun had
couched behind the tor, the hillside was cool, and some rabbits had
come out. 'Tonight!' he thought. Just as from the earth everything was
pushing up, unfolding under the soft insistent fingers of an unseen
hand, so were his heart and senses being pushed, unfolded. He got up
and broke off a spray from a crab-apple tree. The buds were like
Megan--sh