to and fro, some sitting up on their haunches with ears pricked,
some gamboling round the lichened trunk of the weeping ash tree.

Out of the water may-flies are rising and soaring upwards to circle
round the topmost branches of the firs. Looking upwards, you may see
hundreds of them dancing in unalloyed delight, enjoying their brief
existence in this beautiful world.

Birds of many kinds, swallows and swifts, sparrows, fly-catchers,
blackbirds, robins and wrens, all and sundry are busy chasing the poor
green-drakes. As soon as the flies emerge from their husks and hover
above the surface of the stream, many of them are snapped up. But the
trout have "gone down,"--they are fairly gorged for the day; they will
not trouble the fly any more to-night.

And then those glorious bicycle rides in the long summer evenings, when,
scarcely had the sun gone down beyond the ridge of rolling uplands than
the moon, almost at the full, and gorgeously serene, cast her soft,
mysterious light upon a silent world. One such night two anglers,
gliding softly through the ancient village of Bibury, dismounted from
their machines and stood on the bridge which spans the River Coln. Below
them the peaceful waters flowed silently onwards with all the smoothness
of oil, save that ever and anon rays of silvery moonlight fell in
streaks of radiant whiteness upon its glassy surface.

From beneath the bridge comes the sound of busy waters, a sound, as is
often the case with running water, that you do not hear unless you
listen for it carefully. Close by, too, at the famous spring, crystal
waters are welling forth from the rock, pure and stainless as they were
a thousand years ago. All else is silent in the village. The sky is
flecked by myriads of tiny cloudlets, all separate from each other, and
mostly of one shape and size; but just below the brilliant orb, which
floats serene and proud above the line of mackerel sky, fantastic peaks
of clouds, like far-off snow-capped heights of rugged Alps, are
pointing upwards.

Suddenly there comes a change. A fairy circle of prismatic colour is
gathering round the moon, beautifying the scene a thousandfold; an inner
girdle of hazy emerald hue immediately surrounds the lurid orb, which is
now seen as "in a glass darkly"; whilst encircling all is a narrow rim
of red light, like the rosy hues of the setting sun that have scarcely
died away in the west. The beauty of this lunar rainbow is enhanced by
the framew