Though you may claim with seeming sense That Ignorance is not Innocence, And that it doth her worth enhance Whose Innocence is not Ignorance; In either case, recall to mind, Unstainedness is hard to find, And when the childish kind is rare The other lives not anywhere. The harvest had ripened and been cut in the fields, and rich red apples were glowing like ambitious rubies in every orchard of the fair valley of Salvières, where the sun brought forth all the beauty of variegated foliage--fawn, and scarlet, and amaranth, and pure gold. It was early morning as yet, and tiny pink fleeces of cloud still lingered in the east, infinite and subtle against the deepening blue of the sky. The little river flowed rapidly between its screens of bushes and tall reeds, and the grass in the shadow of hedge and tree, not quite dry of night-dews, held a million liquid gems of iridescent tints that seemed to sparkle the more for the gentle thunder of the water, scurrying over great mossy rocks on its way to the sea. Thatched roofs nestled beneath the heathery heights inclosing the valley on both sides--heights crowned with serried regiments of firs--and on the Castle side lawns of emerald green ran headlong down the steep descent to the limits of the home park and its splendid gates of forged iron. The park was a spot well suited to reveries and day-dreams; a concert-place for nightingales where the grassy alleys were chequered by light and shade in almost equal measure, as a rule, but now the deep-diapered shadows were still heavy. It was a faultless morning, indeed, and so thought the “Gamin” as she stood for a moment leaning against the scaly bark of a Himalayan cedar, gazing downward to the pearl-and-silver haze that hung gauzily over the river. A flock of sanctimonious rooks circled overhead, cawing their raucous warning, while blackbirds flitting to and fro under the branches sent from their yellow beaks a constant melodious whistle, whose bourdon was furnished by squadrons of bees mumbling all together as they worked from clump to clump of wild autumnal flowers: “_We’re working--working--working--we’re working--working against--the winter; we’re working--working--well!_” The “Gamin” did not move, thinking her white thoughts there undisturbed. She wore a soft dress of dove-gray, one half-blown snowy rose with a heart of gold in her belt, and beneath her wide-winged garden hat her crinkled hair was golden, too, but of a paler shade.