From the Petty Sessions court the congregation wended its way back to Trover, by the muddy lane, 'Church' and 'Chapel,' arguing the case. To dim the triumph of the 'Church' the fact remained that the baker had lost his loaf and had not been compensated. The loaf was worth money; no money had passed. It was hard to be victorious and yet reduced to silence and dark looks at girding adversaries. The nearer they came to home, the more angry with 'Chapel' did they grow. Then the bell-ringer had his inspiration. Assembling his three assistants, he hurried to the belfry, and in two minutes the little old tower was belching forth the merriest and maddest peal those bells had ever furnished. Out it swung in the still air of the grey winter day, away to the very sea. A stranger, issuing from the inn, hearing that triumphant sound, and seeing so many black-clothed people about, said to his driver: 'What is it--a wedding?' 'No, zurr, they say 'tis for the rector, like; he've a just been acquitted for larceny.' * * * * * On the Tuesday following, the rector's ravaged face and red-grey hair appeared in Mrs. Gloyn's doorway, and his voice, creaking like a saw, said: 'Can you let me have a pound of butter? Pay you soon.' What else could he do? Not even to God's elect does the sky always send down manna. 1916. IV A STRANGE THING Not very long ago, during a sojourn in a part of the West country never yet visited by me, I went out one fine but rather cold March morning for a long ramble. I was in one of those disillusioned moods that come to writers, bankrupt of ideas, bankrupt of confidence, a prey to that recurrent despair, the struggle with which makes the profession of the pen--as a friend once said to me--"a manly one." "Yes"--I was thinking, for all that the air was so brisk, and the sun so bright--"nothing comes to me nowadays, no flashes of light, none of those suddenly shaped visions that bring cheer and warmth to a poor devil's heart, and set his brain and pen to driving on. A bad, bad business!" And my eyes, wandering over the dip and rise, the woods, the moor, the rocks of that fine countryside, took in the loveliness thereof with the profound discontent of one who, seeing beauty, feels that he cannot render it. The high lane-banks had just been pollarded, one could see right down over the fields and gorse and bare woods tinged with that rosy brown of beech and birch twigs, and the dusty saffron of the larches. And suddenly my glance was arrested by something vivid, a sort of black and white excitement in the air. "Aha!" I thought, "a magpie. Two! Three! Good! Is it an omen?" The birds had risen at the bottom of a field, their twining, fluttering voyage--most decorative of all bird flights--was soon lost in the wood beyond, but something it had left behind in my heart; I felt more hopeful, less inclined to think about the failure of my spirit, better able to give myself up to this new