When Marmaduke was not with me, which often enough happened, poor fellow, and particularly after that unfortunate meeting with his uncle in the churchyard--the whole Chase seemed abandoned to myself. I dare say it was not really so, and that if I had not been a privileged person I should soon have found out my mistake, but for days and days I never saw any human being there. Now and then the figure of a gamekeeper, dwarfed by distance, would make its appearance for a moment, to be lost the next in some leafy glade. But the sense of solitude was thereby rather increased than otherwise, just as the poet tells us in a case where the ear and not the eye was concerned, "the busy woodpecker <i>made stiller</i> by his sound the inviolable quietness." Lying couched in fern, in that lordly pleasure-place, I have myself entertained some poetic thoughts, although they never found expression. Even now, as I shut my eyes, I make an inward picture of some such resting-place; nothing to be seen but the long green feathery stems which the summer air just stirs about my brow, and the broad branches of the oak that stretch themselves motionless between me and the sun; nothing to be heard but the coo of the ring-dove, and the swift stealthy bite of the dappled deer. Nor did Fairburn Chase lack water to complete its beauty. In front of the Hall itself moved a broad slow stream, which presently slid rather than fell down ledges of mossy stone into a wilderness of trees and shrubs, through which it wandered on like one who has lost his way, but singing blithely nevertheless. Another stream, which was my favourite, burst spring-like from the very heart of the Chase, having been artificially conveyed beneath the avenue, and ran quite a little river, and at a great rate, to form the island where the herons lived; after which, as though it had done its work, it went its way tranquilly enough: If it had nothing to boast of but the heronry it might have been a proud little brook, for never did colony of those solemn birds take their sad pleasure in a more lovely spot; but besides it had a certain bend in it--essential to the beauty of a brook as straightness is to that of a tree--which I have never seen rivalled elsewhere. Its right bank rose there, though not abruptly, and left half its bed of brown sand and loose tinkling shingle bare to the sunlight, save so much of it as the shade of a cluster of lime trees could cover. Here the bee and the bird brought their songs, and the dragon-flies the glory of their turquoise armour and glittering wings throughout the summer noons. The cool fragrant smell of the limes, and the drowsy music of the insects that haunted them, were inexpressibly pleasant to me, who, I am afraid, had not a little of the Asiatic indolence in my nature. Sometimes a group of swans sailed by on the unruffled stream, themselves a slumbrous pageant fit enough to herald sleep; but at all events, swans or no swans, I often did sleep there.