Leaving the rock at last, I went towards the house. It was long and low, and rather sad, standing in a garden all mossy grass and buttercups, with a few rhododendrons and flowery shrubs, below a row of fine old Irish yews. On the stone verandah a grey sheep-dog and a very small golden-haired child were sitting close together, absorbed in each other. A woman came in answer to my knock, and told me, in a pleasant soft, slurring voice, that I might stay the night; and dropping my knapsack, I went out again. Through an old gate under a stone arch I came on the farmyard, quite deserted save for a couple of ducks moving slowly down a gutter in the sunlight; and noticing the upper half of a stable-door open, I went across, in search of something living. There, in a rough loose-box, on thick straw, lay a chestnut, long-tailed mare, with the skin and head of a thoroughbred. She was swathed in blankets, and her face, all cut about the cheeks and over the eyes, rested on an ordinary human's pillow, held by a bearded man in shirt-sleeves; while, leaning against the white-washed walls, sat fully a dozen other men, perfectly silent, very gravely and intently gazing. The mare's eyes were half-closed, and what could be seen of them was dull and blueish, as though she had been through a long time of pain. Save for her rapid breathing, she lay quite still, but her neck and ears were streaked with sweat, and every now and then her hind-legs quivered. Seeing me at the door, she raised her head, uttering a queer, half-human noise; but the bearded man at once put his hand on her forehead, and with a "Woa, my dear, woa, my pretty!" pressed it down again, while with the other hand he plumped up the pillow for her cheek. And, as the mare obediently let fall her head, one of the men said in a low voice: "I never see anything so like a Christian!" and the others echoed him, in chorus, "Like a Christian--like a Christian!" It went to one's heart to watch her, and I moved off down the farm lane into an old orchard, where the apple-trees were still in bloom, with bees--very small ones--busy on the blossoms, whose petals were dropping on to the dock leaves and buttercups in the long grass. Climbing over the bank at the far end, I found myself in a meadow the like of which--so wild and yet so lush--I think I have never seen. Along one hedge of its meandering length were masses of pink mayflower; and between two little running streams quantities of yellow water iris--"daggers," as they call them--were growing; the "print-frock" orchis, too, was all over the grass, and everywhere the buttercups. Great stones coated with yellowish moss were strewn among the ash-trees and dark hollies; and through a grove of beeches on the far side, such as Corot might have painted, a girl was running with a youth after her, who jumped down over the bank and vanished. Thrushes, blackbirds, yaffles, cuckoos, and one other very monotonous little bird