merald
coats of mail. And over that the lark soared in a wide field of air to
hail God at His own very gates. Bitter little sloes grew on the moat,
and blackberries in their season; and if you had descended into one of
the many cups of the place, even long before the sun had begun to
slant, you liked to shout to your companions and be answered cheerily
from the human world. The moat had an uncanniness of its own; it was
haunted by leaping fires that overran it and left no trace. You might
see it afar, suffused by a dull glare, any dim summer night. So have I
myself beheld it when I have crept through the dews on a nocturnal
expedition: and though one of the commonplace suggested that it might
have been the new moon rising scarlet behind the luxuriant vegetation
of the moat, that was in the unimaginative next day, and not when we
discussed the marvel in the scented darkness that comes between summer
eve and dawn.

Then there was the well-field, where a little stream that fed the well
clattered over pebbles, made leaps so sudden down tiny inclines that
we called the commotion a waterfall, and widened under a willow-tree
into a pool, brown and still, where, tradition said, had once been
seen a trout. For sake of this glorious memory we fished long with
squirming worms and a pin, but caught not even the silliest little
minnow. This small game we used to bag, by the way, at will, by simply
lowering a can into the green depths of the well, where there was
always a tiny silver fin a-sailing. Once we kept a pair three days in
the water-jug, and finally restored them to their emerald dark. The
well-field was in part marshy and ended in a rushy place, where
water-cresses grew thick, and a little bridge led into the
neighbour's fields. There we found yellow iris, and the purple bee
orchis, and fox-gloves.

Hard by was Nano's Field, which we affected only in the autumn, for
then we gathered crab-apples, of a yellow and pink, most delightful to
the eye. And also the particular variety of blackberry which ripens
first, and is large and of irregular shape, but, to the common
blackberry, what purple grapes are to the thin, green variety. And
again, there was the front lawn, where the quicken-berry hung in
drooping scarlet clusters above us, as we sat on a knoll, and a sea of
gold and white washed about us in May. But the fields make me
garrulous, and if I were to go on they that never tired the children
might weary the grown listene