d this turned out to be the case. It was
approached along a high causeway crossing the fen, with rich black land
on either hand. No high-road led through or out of the village,
nothing but grass-tracks and drift-ways. The place consisted of a
small hamlet, with an old church and two or three farmhouses of some
size and antiquity; it was all finely timbered with an abundance of
ancient elm-trees everywhere; they stood that afternoon absolutely
still and motionless, with the sun hot on their towering green heads;
and Hugh remembered how, long ago, as a boy at school, he used to
watch, out of the windows of a stuffy class-room, the great elms of the
school close rising just thus in the warm summer air, while his
thoughts wandered from the dull lesson into a region of delighted,
irrecoverable reverie. To-day he sate for a long time in the little
churchyard, the bees humming about the limes with a soft musical note,
that rose and fell with a lazy cadence, while doves hidden somewhere in
the elms lent as it were a voice to the trees. That soft note seemed
to brim over from a spring of measureless content; it seemed like the
calling of the spirit of summer, brooding in indolent joy and innocent
satisfaction over the long sweet hours of sunshine, while the day stood
still to listen. Hugh resigned himself luxuriously to the soft
influences of the place, and felt that for a short space he need
neither look backwards nor forwards, but simply float with the golden
hour.

At last he bestirred himself, realising that he had yet far to go. It
was now cool and fresh, and the shadows of the trees lay long across
the grass. Hugh struck down on to the fen and walked for a long time
in the solitary fields, by a dyke, passing a big ancient farm that lay
very peacefully among its wide pastures.

The thought of the happy, quiet-minded people that might be living
there, leading their simple lives, so little affected by the current of
the world, brought much peace into Hugh's mind. It seemed to him a
very beautiful thing, with something ancient and tranquil about it. It
was all utterly remote from ambition and adventure, and even from
intellectual efficiency; and here Hugh felt himself in a dilemma. His
faith did not permit him to doubt that the civilisation and development
of the world were in accordance with the purpose of God on the one
hand, and yet, on the other hand, that expansion brought with it social
conditions and proble