the vale thick double mounds, heavily timbered
with elm, hide the houses until you are actually in their midst.

Those only know a country who are acquainted with its footpaths. By the
roads, indeed, the outside may be seen; but the footpaths go through the
heart of the land. There are routes by which mile after mile may be
travelled without leaving the sward. So you may pass from village to
village; now crossing green meads, now cornfields, over brooks, past
woods, through farmyard and rick 'barken.' But such tracks are not
mapped, and a stranger misses them altogether unless under the guidance
of an old inhabitant.

At Sarsen the dusty road enters the more modern part of the village at
once, where the broad signs hang from the taverns at the cross-ways and
where the loafers steadily gaze at the new comer. The Lower Path, after
stile and hedge and elm, and grass that glows with golden buttercups,
quietly leaves the side of the double mounds and goes straight through
the orchards. There are fewer flowers under the trees, and the grass
grows so long and rank that it has already fallen aslant of its own
weight. It is choked, too, by masses of clog-weed, that springs up
profusely over the site of old foundations; so that here ancient masonry
may be hidden under the earth. Indeed, these orchards are a survival
from the days when the monks laboured in vineyard and garden, and mayhap
even of earlier times. When once a locality has got into the habit of
growing a certain crop it continues to produce it for century after
century; and thus there are villages famous for apple or pear or cherry,
while the district at large is not at all given to such culture.

The trunks of the trees succeed each other in endless ranks, like
columns that support the most beautiful roof of pink and white. Here the
bloom is rosy, there white prevails: the young green is hidden under the
petals that are far more numerous than leaves, or even than leaves will
be. Though the path really is in shadow as the branches shut out the
sun, yet it seems brighter here than in the open, as if the place were
illuminated by a million tiny lamps shedding the softest lustre. The
light is reflected and apparently increased by the countless flowers
overhead.

The forest of bloom extends acre after acre, and only ceases where
hedges divide, to commence again beyond the boundary. A wicket gate, all
green with a film of vegetation over the decaying wood, opens under