ping boughs.
Roofs of red tile and dormer windows rise behind the trees, the dull
yellow of the walls is almost hidden, and deep shadows lurk about the
shore.

Opposite, across the stream, a wide green sward stretches beside the
towing-path, lit up with sunshine which touches the dandelions till they
glow in the grass. From time to time a nightingale sings in a hawthorn
unregarded, and in the elms of the park hard by a crowd of jackdaws
chatter. But a little way round a curve the whole stream opens to the
sunlight and becomes blue, reflecting the sky. Again, sweeping round
another curve with bounteous flow, the current meets the wind direct, a
cloud comes up, the breeze freshens, and the watery green waves are
tipped with foam.

Rolling upon the strand, they leave a line like a tide marked by twigs
and fragments of dead wood, leaves, and the hop-like flowers of
Chichester elms which have been floated up and left. Over the stormy
waters a band of brown bank-martins wheel hastily to and fro, and from
the osiers the loud chirp of the sedge-reedling rises above the buffet
of the wind against the ear, and the splashing of the waves.

Once more a change, where the stream darts along swiftly, after having
escaped from a weir, and still streaked with foam. The shore rises like
a sea beach, and on the pebbles men are patching and pitching old barges
which have been hauled up on the bank. A skiff partly drawn up on the
beach rocks as the current strives to work it loose, and up the varnish
of the side glides a flickering light reflected from the wavelets. A
fleet of such skiffs are waiting for hire by the bridge; the waterman
cleaning them with a parti-coloured mop spies me eyeing his vessels, and
before I know exactly what is going on, and whether I have yet made up
my mind, the sculls are ready, the cushions in; I take my seat, and am
shoved gently forth upon the stream.

After I have gone under the arch, and am clear of all obstructions, I
lay the sculls aside, and reclining let the boat drift past a ballast
punt moored over the shallowest place, and with a rising load of gravel.
One man holds the pole steadying the scoop, while his mate turns a
windlass the chain from which drags it along the bottom, filling the bag
with pebbles, and finally hauls it to the surface, when the contents are
shot out in the punt.

It is a floating box rather than a boat, square at each end, and built
for capacity instead of progress. There