Across the fields from the church--through the clover meadow first, into the broad wheat-field next, and thence over the pasture lands, all yellow with the glint of buttercups--you will come to the Pettingdale farm. A thrill and a song and an aching went through my blood all together when I looked on the block of buildings the other day. How sweet-and-bitter is remembrance; how musical to the heart, and yet how sad with yearning! For the sight of that rugged old chimney standing square and grim and familiar upon the grey roof of the house; the red-tiled barns clustering behind, plain and prosperous; the sweep of the waving corn-fields towards the setting sun; caused my heart to surge with swift memories, long since buried and forgotten beneath the stress of life. How peaceful were the old days amidst these very fields! When the heart is young, ah! then's the time for music; and what echoes of far-off melodies--songs of old summers past and gone--does the scene awaken! There's the orchard where I spent such rare hours. Here are the hedges where we went a-nutting. Yonder is the oak-tree which we used to climb, Frank Pettingdale and I. It is still the same sturdy tree, keeping gnarled and knotted guard over the same creaking gateway, just as in the old days! Wherever my eyes fell there were thorns and roses for the heart all in one moment. It was in the old upland field that Clara Pettingdale and I as children used to wander, hand in hand, amongst the buttercups. She has long slept, poor Clara, in that corner of the churchyard where lie generations of Pettingdales past and gone--a long line of sturdy yeomen.