Pursuing my hobby of anatomising character, I studied her a good deal during the pauses of conversation, of which there were not a few. Compared with Treherne, whom I heard in advance, laughing and talking with his usual light-heartedness, she must have found me uncommonly sombre and dull. Yet it was pleasant to be strolling leisurely along, one's feet dropping softly down through rustling dead leaves into the dry, sandy mould which is peculiar to this neighbourhood: you may walk in it, ancle-deep, for miles, across moors and under pine-woods, without soiling a shoe. Pleasant to see the sunshine striking the boughs of the trees, and lying in broad, bright rifts on the ground here and there, wherever there was an opening in the dense green tops of those fine Scotch firs, the like of which I have never beheld out of my own country, nor there since I was quite a boy. Also, the absence of other forest trees, the high elevation, the wide spaces of moorland, and the sandy soil, give to the atmosphere here a rarity and freshness which exhilarates, mentally and bodily, in no small degree. I thank God I have never lost my love of nature; never ceased to feel an almost boyish thrill of delight in the mere sunshine and fresh air. For miles I could have walked on, thus luxuriating, without wishing to disturb my enjoyment by a word, but it was necessary to converse a little, so I made the valuable and original remark "that this neighbourhood would be very pretty in the spring." My companion replied with a vivacity of indignation most unlike a grown young lady, and exceedingly like a child:-- "Pretty? It is beautiful! You never can have seen it, I am sure." I said, "My regiment did not come home till May: I had spent this spring in the Crimea." "Ah! the spring flowers there, I have heard, are remarkably beautiful, much more so than ours." "Yes;" and as she seemed fond of flowers, I told her of the great abundance which in the peaceful spring that followed the war, we had noticed, carpeting with a mass of colour those dreary plains; the large Crimean snow-drops, the jonquils, and blue hyacinths, growing in myriads, about Balaklava and on the banks of the Tchernaya; while on every rocky dingle, and dipping into every tiny brook, hung bushes of the delicate yellow jasmine. "How lovely! But I would not exchange England for it. You should see how the primroses grew all along that bank, and a little beyond, outside the wood, is a hedge side, which will be one mass of blue-bells." "I shall look for them. I have often found blue-bells till the end of October." "Nonsense!" What a laugh it was, with such a merry ring. "I beg your pardon, Doctor Urquhart, but, really, blue-bells in October! Who ever heard of such a thing?"