our and melody had been
blotted out. My clothes were hoary with clinging mist, my fingers numb
with cold, and Highclere, its scattered cottages appearing like dim
smudges through the whiteness, was the dreariest village on earth. I
fled on to Newbury in quest of warmth and light, and found it indoors,
but the town was deep in the fog.

The next day I ventured out again to look for the sun, and found it not,
but my ramble was not without its reward. In a pine wood three miles
from the town I stood awhile to listen to the sound as of copious rain
of the moisture dropping from the trees, when a sudden tempest of loud,
sharp metallic notes--a sound dear to the ornithologist's ears--made me
jump; and down into the very tree before which I was standing dropped a
flock of about twenty crossbills. So excited and noisy when coming
down, the instant they touched the tree they became perfectly silent and
motionless. Seven of their number had settled on the outside shoots, and
sat there within forty feet of me, looking like painted wooden images of
small green and greenish-yellow parrots; for a space of fifteen minutes
not the slightest movement did they make, and at length, before going, I
waved my arms about and shouted to frighten them, and still they refused
to stir.

Next morning that memorable fog lifted, to England's joy, and quitting
my refuge I went out once more into the region of high sheep-walks,
adorned with beechen woods and traveller's-joy in the hedges, rambling
by Highclere, Burghclere, and Kingsclere. The last--Hampshire's little
Cuzco--is a small and village-like old red brick town, unapproached by
a railroad and unimproved, therefore still beautiful, as were all places
in other, better, less civilized days. Here in the late afternoon
a chilly grey haze crept over the country and set me wishing for a
fireside and the sound of friendly voices, and I turned my face towards
beloved Silchester. Leaving the hills behind me I got away from the haze
and went my devious way by serpentine roads through a beautiful, wooded,
undulating country. And I wish that for a hundred, nay, for a thousand
years to come, I could on each recurring November have such an afternoon
ride, with that autumnal glory in the trees. Sometimes, seeing the road
before me carpeted with pure yellow, I said to myself, now I am coming
to elms; but when the road shone red and russet-gold before me I knew it
was overhung by beeches. But the oak is the c