The gardener did not sleep under a hedge as all merry vagabonds do—(Tra-la-la)—but he slept in the very middle of a large field, much to the surprise of the cows. One or two of these coffee-coloured matrons awoke him at dawn by means of an unwinking examination that would have put a lesser man out of countenance. But the gardener, as becomes a man attacked by the empty impertinences of females, turned the other way and presently slept again. He washed next morning near to where the cows drank. He had no soap and the cows had no tumblers,—nothing could have been more elemental than either performance. “I am very near to the heart of nature—tra-la-la,” trilled the gardener. But the heart of nature eludes him who tries to measure the distance. The only beat that the gardener heard was the soft thud of his own feet along the thick dust of the highway. About the next day but one he came to a place where the scenery changed its mind abruptly, flung buttercups and beeches behind it, and drew over its shoulders the sombre cloak of heather and pines. Under an unremarkable pine tree, listening to the impatient summons of the woodpecker (who, I think, is the feathered soul of the foolish virgin outside the bridegroom’s door), sat a man. He was so fair that he might as well have been white-haired. His eyes were like two copper sequins set between white lashes, beneath white brows, in a white face. His lips were very red, and if he had seemed more detached and less friendly, he would have looked like harlequin. But he rose from his seat on the pine needles, and came towards the gardener, as though he had been waiting for him. The gardener steeled himself against the stranger’s first word, fearing lest he should say, “What a glorious day!” But the stranger, making a spasmodic attempt to remove a hat which had been left at home, said, “My name is Samuel Rust, a hotel-keeper. Won’t you come and look at my place?” It was impossible for the gardener to do otherwise, for Mr. Samuel Rust’s place framed itself in a gap in the woods to the right, and was introduced by a wave of its owner’s hand. “What a red place!” said the gardener. “Of course. No other name is possible for it,” said Mr. Rust. The house was built of red brick that had much tangerine colour in it. The flowering heather surged to its very door-step. And thick around it the slim pine tree-trunks shot up, like flame, whispered flame. The gardener smiled at it. If only Hilda might be the colour of those tree-trunks when she flowered. Mr. Rust acknowledged the smile in the name of his red place. “It’s an—inoffensive little hole,” he said.