The sun beat on me as I climbed the hill, and the dust rose as I walked from the loose, stony road. I came gladly into the shelter of trees, ash and oak chiefly, not yet out in leaf on this exposed slope, though the celandines and wild anemone were in flower, and the ground and the banks were green with new growth, ground-ivy and columbine, with its heart-shaped glossy leaves, wild parsley, and the beautiful serrated little leaves of the wild strawberry. On the left-hand side of the road, on the higher slopes, the trees had all been cut (one of the sad exigencies, I fear, of war), and they were burning the ground as I came past; the smell of burning wood followed me, and the thin wreaths of blue smoke, curling up the hillside, looked faint but ominous in the morning sunshine like a warning beacon, indeed, of the approach of some raider. As I paused for breath, and stood looking down at the exquisite blue glimmer of the sea through the grey stems of the ash and the delicate thin tassels of the larches, a drama of hunting passed before me. There was a thin squeak of terror and a scurry of wings, and some swallows fled past with a hawk in pursuit. He was almost upon the hindermost, when he crossed the path of a rook, who rose at him, cawing angrily, and was immediately joined by two or three others, who rose from the trees. The hawk turned with incredible swiftness; I saw the great white bars of his underwings as he "banked" steeply, and went off. The swallows had escaped and the rooks sank back into the green tree-tops. All this happened within a yard or two of me; I saw it in detail, terror in the movements of the swallows, and the eager stretch of the hawk's head and the gleam of his eyes.