Upon this canvas, so hugely spread, Nature painted her pictures in punctual procession, and in some measure Maynard valued them. Indeed, under the present stress and storm that unsettled the weather of his mind, he found himself more pervious than of old to the natural impressions of the Vale. To-day a north wind shouted overhead, drove the scattered clouds before it and hummed in organ notes upon the great mass of granite that capped the Beacon. Then copper red ribbons of beech fell broadly into the depths below--and, against their fire, the plantations of the pine wove darker patterns, where they descended in a gradual arc over the shoulders of the hills, until the air and space wrought magic upon their distances and swept them together in one glowing integument for the low lands. There it was as though a mighty tiger skin had been flung down upon the undulating earth, so rich in orange-tawny and russet were the forest reaches, so black the slant shadows thrown by the low sun at spinney edge, along the boundary of hanging woods, or where open fields broke horizontally into the kingdom of the trees. There shone green meadows against the flame of the fall around them; and the ploughed fallows heightened colour by their contrast. They intruded their tessellate designs, wrought out in a network of squares and triangles and rhomboidal forms; they climbed the hills, penetrated the valley depths and ceased only where the upland ramparts barred their progress with heath and stone. Shadows flew to dim the splendour and then again reveal it; nor was the clarity of the air purchased without cost, for unseen moisture drenched it and sometimes took shape of separate storms, sweeping in a low, grey huddle over the earth they hid, yet divided by great sunny spaces. They drew their veils over half a league of the land at a time, then dislimned and vanished again. And far away, beyond the last peaks and saliencies southward, stretched a horizon of dazzling and colourless light, where sea girdled earth and Devon rolled dark against the liquid brilliance of the Channel lifted beyond it. The Vale, with its river winding through the midst, was a frame for these far-away passages of light and darkness--a setting and boundary, rich but restrained; for under the sleight of distance, the glories of the colour, each touch a tiny leaf of gold or crimson, were cooled and kneaded with shadow and tempered by the blue November air.