Colin got out of his motor when it stopped at the lodge-gates at Stanier, and struck into the woods through which a short cut led to the house. He had been in London for the last month, and had driven down after lunch on this April afternoon through glints of sunshine and scuds of windy rain. But now with the fall of day the sky had cleared, and, after the pavements and fogs of the town, he longed to immerse himself in the sense of Stanier and spring woods and bird-song. All round him were the melodies and the enchantments of the spring. The turf underneath the foot was elastic with the thick growth of the young grass, and vivid with little round cushions of greenest moss, and the smell of the damp earth was fresh and fragrant. Neither oak nor ash were yet more than budding, but the great hawthorns that studded the slopes up from the lodge to the high ground were covered with the varnished clusters of young leaf, the hazels and alders by the stream that ran into the lake were gay with pendulous catkins and mole-skin buttons, and the copses of birch and hornbeam were full-fledged. Clumps of primroses and sheets of anemonies were in flower in plantations where the young trees had been felled last year, and outside on the turf the wild daffodils bloomed among the curled heads of the young bracken. Once and again a copper-coloured cock pheasant scurried away from beside the path with head low and stealthy stride; in the covers thrushes were vocal with evensong, and in some remote tree-top the chiff-chaff was metallically chirping. From the firs pigeons started out with clapping wings, and a heron, disturbed at his fishing, flapped ponderously away. The path rose steeply, and presently he came to the top of the ridge, and passed through the deer-fence into the Old Park. Here the trees, planted by Elizabeth’s Colin, on what was once bare down, were of statelier growth, and more widely spaced, so that between their trunks broad stretches of the reclaimed marsh-land below could be seen, and beyond, the faint melted rim of the sea. A warm spring air out of the south-west flowed up from the plain, seasoned with saltness, and he drew in long breaths of its refreshment. Ten minutes more brisk walking along the height brought him to the end of the ridge, and below, he saw the roof of Stanier and its red walls smouldering in the clear dusk. The thrill of home vibrated in him; he could never look on Stanier, after an absence, without a smile of pleasure and welcome on his lips.