The book lay unheeded by his side. From his high vantage point he looked downward at the wide panorama which stretched to the horizon, faintly and mistily blue. The glorious spring sunshine lay like a quickening fire upon the land. The tree tops, moving lightly in the west wind, were budding into tender green; the dark pine groves were softened; the patches of rich brown soil, freshly turned by the plow, gleamed as though with promise of the crops to come. Below him the dusty lane along which he had traveled stretched like a narrow white belt, vanishing here and there in the woods and disappearing at times between lichen-stained gray walls. He traced it backward across the silvery brook, back to the quaint village with its clustering gray stone houses, red-tiled roofs, and strange church tower, and watched for a moment the delicate wreaths of smoke curl upward, straight with the promise of fine weather. Farther still he followed it into the flat country past the reservoir, a brilliant streak of scintillating light, back into the heart of the town whence he had come, and which stretched there now in the middle distance a medley of factory chimneys and miles of houses--a great foul blot upon the fair landscape. He remembered it as he had ridden out an hour or so ago, the outskirts with all their depressing ugliness, a cobbled road, a shabby tramcar with a tired horse creeping along a road where dirty children played weary games and shouted shrilly to one another. A miserable region of smoke-begrimed houses and small shops, an unattractive public house at every corner, round which loafed men with the white faces of tired animals, and women dragging babies and shouting abuse to their more venturesome offspring. With painful distinctness he saw it all--the opened factory gates, the belching out of a slatternly mob of shrieking girls and ribald youths, the streets untidy with the refuse of the greengrocers' shops, the hot, fetid atmosphere of the low-lying town. He closed his eyes--ah, how swiftly it all vanished! In his ears was the pleasant chirping of many insects, the glorious sunshine lay about him like wine, the west wind made music in the woods, one thrush in particular was singing to him blithely from the thatched roof of his cottage--a single throbbing note against a melodious background of the whole woodful of twittering birds. The man smiled to himself, well pleased.