Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England Volume 1, Chapter I. HOW GIL CARR HEARD A CONCERT IN SPRING. "Too soon for sweet mace--a bunch for sweet Mace," said Gil Carr as he bent down amongst the sedges to pick the bright blue scorpion grass, its delicate flowers relieved with yellow, "so she must have forget-me-not. I wonder whether she'll keep some when I'm far away." He stopped and smiled and listened, for the morning concert was beginning two hundred and fifty years ago, at four o'clock in the morning and down in a Sussex valley near the sea. A long while since? Nay, a mere instant of time in this world's life; and spite of all some writers say, and though we now have steam and electric current to our hand, two hundred and fifty years ago men thought and spoke the same--perhaps a little more roughly than they do now. There was the pleasant gurgle of water at Gil Carr's feet, and as he drew back from where the stream rippled and swirled, and a trout darted into sight, saw him, and flashed away beneath the shelter of a jutting stone, he paused beneath the spreading branches of the trees, half-closed his eyes, thought of sweet Mace, and revelled, as young men of eight-and-twenty can who love to place one object in the chiefest spot of all they see. Here is the site of Gil Carr's musings, for untouched Nature shows little change. Overhead there is a fabric of tenderest green leaves, laced with pearly cobweb and flashing threads of sunshine, which run in and out like sheaves of glorified asbestos, and weave the whole into a wondrous shelter beneath whose delicious dream-shadow one wanders in a haze of green. For Nature's own colour is lavishly used to decorate this glorious amphitheatre for the first concert in spring, and there it is in every shade, from the sweet pale ash-green of the opening willow to the rich hue of the dogs' mercury and hemlock. Green everywhere, for the delicate curtains of the trees are green, the carpet is verdant, and the banks that rise tier upon tier are of the richest velvet moss. There is no uniformity here, there are no rows of seats, but a grand confusion, upon which the eye lingers restfully and which it refuses to quit.