d.
I know you will believe that.--Ever yours,

T. B.

UPTON,
June 25, 1904.

DEAR HERBERT,--This is not a letter; it is a sketch, an aquarelle out
of my portfolio.

Yesterday was a hot, heavy, restless day, with thunder brewing in the
dark heart of huge inky clouds; a day when one craves for light, and
brisk airs, and cold bare hill-tops; when one desires to get away from
one's kind, away from close rooms and irritable persons. So I went off
on my patient and uncomplaining bicycle, along a country road; and then
crossing a wide common, like the field, I thought, in the Pilgrim's
Progress across which Evangelist pointed an improving finger, I turned
down to the left to the waterside In the still air, that seemed to
listen, the blue wooded hills across the river had a dim, rich beauty.
How mysterious are the fields and heights from which one is separated
by a stream, the fields in which one knows every tree and sloping lawn
by sight, and where one sets foot so rarely! The road came to an end in
a little grassy space among high-branching elms. On my left was a farm,
with barns and byres, overhung by stately walnut trees; on the right a
grange among its great trees, a low tiled house, with white casements,
in a pleasant garden, full of trellised roses, a big dovecote, with a
clattering flight of wheeling pigeons circling round and round. Hard
by, close to the river, stands a little ancient church, with a timbered
spire, the trees growing thickly about it, dreaming forgotten dreams.

Here all was still and silent; the very children moved languidly about,
not knowing what ailed them. Far off across the wide-watered plain came
a low muttering of thunder, and a few big drops pattered in the great
elms.

This secluded river hamlet has an old history; the church, which is
served from a distant parish, stands in a narrow strip of land which
runs down across the fields to the river, and dates from the time when
the river was a real trade-highway, and when neighbouring parishes,
which had no frontages on the stream, found it convenient to have a
wharf to send their produce, timber or bricks, away by water. But the
wharf has long since perished, though a few black stakes show where it
stood; and the village, having no landing-place and no inn, has dropped
out of the river life, and minds its own quiet business.

A few paces from the church the river runs silently and strongly to the
great weir below. To-day it was s