The sunshine raced ahead of us, vaulted the hilltop, and was gone. A scatter of warm rain drove out of the grey heaven. I turned up my coat-collar just in time to intercept the returning sun. ‘True,’ said I, ‘but the good of hard knocks depends not on their frequency, but on the profit you extract from them. I get and keep designedly as much of this as I can, so a little goes a long way with me. And I love the quiet and stillness of the deep wood, when the wind is roaring out in the open. If we had gone there to-day, we should have found the rosebay willowherbs in full bloom, and more butterflies upon them than you could find in a week elsewhere. Besides, the ups in life are just as good for one as the downs. I can admire the old Scotch pine that clings to the bare hill-top through a century of winter storms, but I must not be inconsiderate of the lilies.’ The old Windlecombe vicar has a way of dealing with notions of this kind which is good for his hearer, whether he allow himself convinced, or consider his dignity affronted. He ventilates such ideas as he would let light into a room, by dashing a rough hand through the dust-grimed window. It is a method unpicturesque and often brutal, but effective and salutary in the main. I owe him gratefully many a pretty rainbow bubble of conceit exploded. ‘Pluck your head out of the sand,’ quoth he, ‘for your ragged hinder-parts are visible to all the world of honest eyes. The pine and the lily are not choosing creatures. To them is their environment allotted, but to you is given the wilful fashioning of it. A man may be either gold or iron—made either for beauty or for use. But the one will not decorate, nor the other uphold the world, if he shirk the fires that must first refine or temper him. So away with your foolish Sahara tricks, and get on with the work the moment brings you.’ By this he meant I was to look about me, and tell him what I saw as we went along, a duty in which I was too often an unintentional malingerer.