It is not strange that they fear and hate. I look at them--their dark, pale, furious faces--and think that if they could be visible thus in the daylight, all {52} who came to that spot or passed near it would turn and fly with a terrifying image in their mind which would last to the end of life. But they do not resent my presence, and would not resent it were I permitted to come at last to dwell with them for ever. Perhaps they know me for one of their tribe--know that what they feel I feel, would hate what they hate. Has it not been said that love itself is an argument in favour of immortality? All love--the love of men and women, of a mother for her child, of a friend for a friend--the love that will cause him to lay down his life for another. Is it possible to believe, they say, that this beautiful sacred flame can be darkened for ever when soul and body fall asunder? But love without hate I do not know and cannot conceive; one implies the other. No good and no bad quality or principle can exist (for me) without its opposite. As old Langland wisely says: For by luthere men know the good; And whereby wiste men which were white If all things black were? {53} CHAPTER III A favourite New Forest haunt--Summertide--Young blackbird's call--Abundance of blackbirds and thrushes, and destruction of young--Starlings breeding--The good done by starlings--Perfume of the honeysuckle--Beauty of the hedge rose--Cult of the rose--Lesser whitethroat--His low song--Common and lesser whitethroat--In the woods--A sheet of bracken--Effect of broken surfaces--Roman mosaics at Silchester--Why mosaics give pleasure--Woodland birds--Sound of insect life--Abundance of flies--Sufferings of cattle--Dark Water--Biting and teasing flies--Feeding the fishes and fiddlers with flies.