It was true enough, and with the bees were the November butterflies too, if he could only have seen them. In a sunny corner by the path-side stood an old pollard ash, its trunk rearing up out of the thicket high over our heads, like a huge doubled fist thrust into a green gauntlet of ivy. It was only one tree among innumerable others in the wood, and the same stirring scene was enacting round each of them. Though with everything else the season was autumn, for the ivy it was the heyday of spring. The great tree above us was smothered in golden blossom, the nectar glistening in the sunshine, a rich honey scent burdening the still air. There were not only hive-bees and butterflies rioting at this, the last outdoor feast of the year, but bumble-bees, wasps, drone-flies, every other creature that could fly and had escaped the chills of the November nights. The air was misty with the glint of their wings, and full of a deep sweet song. As we passed along by the wood, we were always either drawing into the zone of this ivy music or leaving it behind us, and never once did it forsake our path all the morning through. We came at last to a spot where the woods fell back from the waterside, and a stretch of wild, hillocky grassland, overgrown with brier and bramble, bordered the stream. Between the willows that stood upon the bank dipping their yellow autumn tresses in the flood, I could see the placid breadth of the river, with its topsy-turvy vision of the glowing hills beyond—hills that, by reason of the interlacing boughs above, were directly invisible. A lark broke up almost from under our feet, and went slanting aloft into the blue sky, singing as though it were April. The Reverend put a hand upon my arm. ‘Well: what do you see?’ he asked. ‘Everything must be changed since we were here last, and—’ ‘I see,’ said I, rather disturbed, ‘a painter’s easel straddled in front of your favourite creek—an easel with a three-legged stool before it, but no painter. I see also, a little farther on, a big white umbrella, with the top of a sombrero just showing above it, and a great cloud of tobacco smoke drifting out of it, but here again no other sign of painter or man. Shall we go back?’ But he was for pushing on. As we approached the umbrella, a throaty tenor voice was uplifted to a weird foreign strain:— ‘En passant par Square Montholon, La digue-digue donc! la digue-digue donc! Je rencontre une jeune tendron! La digue-digue— ‘Superb! _Su_-perb! If only I could excite myself to— Ah! if only that tumultuous thrill, which I know always presages— ‘la digue-digue donc! J’offre tout de suite ma main—ye La brigue-donc-dain-ye—’ Or at least so the gibberish sounded. But now it suddenly left off. A palette went rattling to the ground. The short squat figure of the owner of the caravan burst into view.