But if the sun rises clear, the rays light up the yellow sand of the quarries inland, the dark brown ploughed fields, and the black copses where many a bud is sleeping and waiting for the spring. A haze lies about the Downs and softens their smooth outline as in summer, if you can but face the bleak wind which never rests up there. The outline starts on the left hand fairly distinguished against the sky. As it sweeps round, it sinks, and is lost in the bluish haze; gradually it rises again, and is visible on the right, where the woods stand leafless on the ridge. Or the vapour settles down thicker, and the vast expanse becomes gloomy in broad day. The formless hills loom round about, the roads and marks of civilisation seem blotted out, it may be some absolute desert for aught that appears. An immense hollow filled with mist lies underneath. Presently the wind drifts the earth-cloud along, and there by a dark copse are three or four horsemen eagerly seeking a way through the plantation. They are two miles distant, but as plainly visible as if you could touch them. By-and-by one finds a path, and in single file the troop rides into the wood. On the other side there is a long stretch of open ploughed field, and about the middle of it little white dots close together, sweeping along as if the wind drove them. Horsemen are galloping on the turf at the edge of the arable, which is doubtless heavy going. The troop that has worked through the wood labours hard to overtake; the vapour follows again, and horsemen and hounds are lost in the abyss. On a ridge closer at hand, and above the mist, stand two conical wheat ricks sharply defined--all that a draughtsman could seize on. Still, even in winter there is about the hills the charm of outline, and the uncertain haze produces some of the effects of summer, but it is impossible to stay and admire, the penetrating wind will permit of nothing except hard exercise. Looking back now and then, the distant hollows are sometimes visible and sometimes filled; great curtains of mist sweep along illumined by the sunlight above them; the woods are now brown, now dark, and now faintly blue, as the light changes. Over the range-and down in the valley where the hursts or woods are situated, surrounded by meads and cornfields, there are other notes of colour to be found. In the leafless branches of the oak sometimes the sunshine plays on the bark of the smaller boughs, and causes a sense of light and colour among them. The slender boughs of the birch, too, reflect the sunshine as if polished. Beech leaves still adhere to the lower branches, spots of bright brown among the grey and ash tint of the underwood. If a woodpecker passes, his green plumage gleams the more from the absence of the abundant foliage which partly conceals even him in summer. The light-coloured wood-pigeons show distinctly against the dark firs; the golden crest of the tiny wren is to be seen in the furze or bramble.