s of
something yet more beautiful--of love that had lived a man's life out to
an end with him, and been faithful and companionable, and not weary of
loving, throughout all these years.

The morning cleared a little, and the sky was once more the old
stone-coloured vault over the sallow meadows and the russet woods, as I
set forth on a dog-cart from Wendover to Tring. The road lay for a good
distance along the side of the hills, with the great plain below on one
hand, and the beech-woods above on the other. The fields were busy with
people ploughing and sowing; every here and there a jug of ale stood in
the angle of the hedge, and I could see many a team wait smoking in the
furrow as ploughman or sower stepped aside for a moment to take a
draught. Over all the brown ploughlands, and under all the leafless
hedgerows, there was a stout piece of labour abroad, and, as it were, a
spirit of picnic. The horses smoked and the men laboured and shouted and
drank in the sharp autumn morning; so that one had a strong effect of
large, open-air existence. The fellow who drove me was something of a
humorist; and his conversation was all in praise of an agricultural
labourer's way of life. It was he who called my attention to these jugs
of ale by the hedgerow; he could not sufficiently express the liberality
of these men's wages; he told me how sharp an appetite was given by
breaking up the earth in the morning air, whether with plough or spade,
and cordially admired this provision of nature. He sang _O fortunatos
agricolas_! indeed, in every possible key, and with many cunning
inflections, till I began to wonder what was the use of such people as
Mr. Arch, and to sing the same air myself in a more diffident manner.

Tring was reached, and then Tring railway station; for the two are not
very near, the good people of Tring having held the railway, of old
days, in extreme apprehension, lest some day it should break loose in
the town and work mischief. I had a last walk, among russet beeches as
usual, and the air filled, as usual, with the carolling of larks; I
heard shots fired in the distance, and saw, as a new sign of the
fulfilled autumn, two horsemen exercising a pack of fox-hounds. And then
the train came and carried me back to London.

FOOTNOTE:

[40] I had nearly finished the transcription of the following pages,
when I saw on a friend's table the number containing the piece from
which this sentence is extracted, a