r-trunk.... D'you think it's any good looking for them?"

Twenty minutes later we were all three--four with Nobby--on the front
seat of the Rolls, which was nosing its way gingerly out of the town.

"I wonder if you realize," said Adele, "what a beautiful country you
live in."

At the moment we were immediately between an unpleasantly crowded tram
and a fourth-rate beerhouse.

"Don't you have trams?" said I. "Or does alcohol mean so much to you? I
suppose prohibition is a bit of a jar."

"To tell you the truth, I was thinking of the Isle of Wight. It looked
so exquisite as we were coming in. Just like a toy continent out of a
giant's nursery."

"Before the day is out," I prophesied, "you shall see finer things than
that."

Once clear of the streets, I gave the car her head.

For a while we slid past low-lying ground, verdant and fresh and
blowing, but flat and sparsely timbered, with coppices here and there
and, sometimes, elms in the hedgerows, and, now and again, a parcel of
youngster oaks about a green--fair country enough at any time, and at
this summer sundown homely and radiant. But there was better to come.

The car fled on.

Soon the ground rose sharply by leaps and bounds, the yellow road
swerving to right and left, deep tilted meadows on one side with a
screen of birches beyond, and on the other a sloping rabble of timber,
whose foliage made up a tattered motley, humble and odd and bastard,
yet, with it all, so rich in tender tones and unexpected feats of
drapery that Adele cried that it was a slice of fairyland and sat with
her chin on her shoulder, till the road curled up into the depths of a
broad pine-wood, through which it cut, thin, and dead straight, and
cool, and strangely solemn. In a flash it had become the nave of a
cathedral, immense, solitary. Sombre and straight and tall, the walls
rose up to where the swaying roof sobered the mellow sunshine and only
let it pass dim and so, sacred. The wanton breeze, caught in the maze of
tufted pinnacles, filtered its chastened way, a pensive organist,
learned to draw grave litanies from the boughs and reverently voice the
air of sanctity. The fresh familiar scent hung for a smokeless incense,
breathing high ritual and redolent of pious mystery. No circumstance of
worship was unobserved. With one consent birds, beasts and insects made
not a sound. The precious pall of silence lay like a phantom cloud,
unruffled. Nature was on her knees.

The car f