Spring comes late on these windy uplands, and indoors one still sits close to the fire. These are the days of booming gales over the sheepwolds, and the afternoon ride with Shotover becomes an adventure. I am not one of those who shirk bicycling in a wind. Give me a two-mile spin with the gust astern, just to loosen the muscles and sweep the morning's books and tobacco from the brain--and then turn and at it! It is like swimming against a great crystal river. Cap off, head up--no crouching over the handle-bars like the Saturday afternoon shopmen! Wind in your hair, the broad blue Cotswold slopes about you, every ounce of leg-drive straining on the pedals--three minutes of it intoxicates you. You crawl up-wind roaring the most glorious nonsense, ribaldry, and exultation into the face of the blast. I am all for the Cotswolds in the last vacation before "Schools." In mid-March our dear gray Mother Oxford sends us away for six weeks while she decks herself against the spring. Far and wide we scatter. The Prince to Germany--the dons to Devon--the reading parties to quiet country inns here and there. Some blithe spirits of my acquaintance are in those glorious dingy garrets of the Latin Quarter with Murger's "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" as a viaticum. Others are among the tulips in Holland. But this time I vote for the Cotswolds and solitude. There is a straggling gray village which lies in the elbow of a green valley, with a clear trout-stream bubbling through it. There is a well-known inn by the bridge, the resort of many anglers. But I am not for inns nor for anglers this time. It is a serious business, these last two months before Schools, and I and my books are camped in a "pensive citadel" up on the hill, where the postman's wife cares for me and worries because I do not eat more than two normal men. There is a low-ceilinged sitting room with a blazing fire. From one corner a winding stair climbs to the bedroom above. There are pipes and tobacco, pens and a pot of ink. There are books--all historical volumes, the only evidence of relaxation being Arthur Gibbs' "A Cotswold Village" and one of Bartholomew's survey maps. Ten hours' work, seven hours' sleep, three hours' bicycling--that leaves four hours for eating and other emergencies. That is how we live on twenty-four hours a day, and turn a probable Fourth in the Schools into a possible Third.