‘The bluebells are out as thick as ever I saw them, Reverend. Under the shadow of the trees they look like purple smoke stealing up the hillside; and where a bar of sunshine pierces through, the colour seems to leap into the dim air like a tongue of flame. How the rabbits play! Every moment they break cover and dart across the open spaces, two or three together. There goes a spotted woodpecker!—I saw his black-and-white coat and crimson plume as he swung through the bar of light. They are scarce here. Here comes something flitting along that I wish you could see—you know how the orange-tip—’ ‘The butterfly with his wings on fire? Don’t grizzle over me, man! I _can_ see it!—lazily looping along, though you think he will fall to earth a cinder any moment at your feet. He is like Nero fiddling, I always think. There must be chervil growing close by.’ ‘Yes, a great bank of it, and the butterfly has gone.’ ‘Well: he is only settling there. Look how the mottled green and white on the under side of his wings, now he has closed them, exactly match the colours of the chervil. All his fire is quenched till you disturb him, and then off he goes, burning himself up as unconcernedly as ever.’ We rounded the corner of the wood, and came upon a little open stretch of heathland. The sulky sweet fragrance of the gorse so loaded the air as to make one’s breath come hard. Over the gorse, linnets sang their slender, tweeting melody. The blossom-laden bushes spread away before us like great heaving waves of gold, flowing up to the hill-brow and over out of sight. Where the crests of yellow bloom stood against the sky, they made the sky a deeper blue. But between the gorse-brakes the heather showed no sign. It crouched low upon the earth, looking black and dreary and dead, as though a forest fire had lately swept by. ‘Dead!’ cried the Reverend scornfully. ‘Turn up a frond of it, and look at the under side of the leaves. Each leaf is black above, but see how green and sappy and full of life it really is, if you look at it aright. One misses a lot in life by taking too lofty a standpoint. The heather in April may be black to you, but it is green enough to the hiding mice.’ We went along in silence for a minute or two. ‘And what about the trees?’ he asked presently. ‘Is it death or life there? The cuckoo never will wait for his green leaves, you know.’ ‘Green leaves I see, but leafage nowhere. All the wood-top is chequered into different clear zones of green, or grey, or russet, or soft sad yellow—buds bursting and leaves just promising everywhere; but leaves, as I want them, none. How slow it all is! I can understand the cuckoo’s impatience. Flying all the way from Africa only to find—’ He had ceased to listen. He had turned swiftly towards the sun-bathed meadows. He put up a thin hand—blue-veined, almost transparent—against the light. He visibly started. ‘I heard the throb of a wing—a new sound. It must be—’