A little beyond is a larger bay of the same kind, bordered by a long curving road entirely lined by elms dividing it from the broad meadow that has an elm rookery in a corner under the steep clean slope of down; at the end is a church singing to itself with all its bells in the solitude. And the hedges are full of strong young thrushes which there is no one to frighten--is there any prettier dress than the speckled feathers of their breasts and the cape of brown over their shoulders and backs, as they stir the dew in May? Then the valley opens wide and the river doubles in gleaming azure about a narrow spit of grass, in sight of a sharp white fall of chalk, into the lucid quiet sea. At this bend a company of sycamores girds and is one with a group of tiled and thatched and gabled buildings, of ochre, brown and rose. The road crosses the river and a path leads near the sea, between mustard flower, lucerne, beans, corn and grass, in flint-walled fields, to a church and farm of flint, overtopped by embowering chestnuts, ilex and the elms of rooks; and below there is another valley and river, a green pathless marsh, at whose edge five noisy belching chimneys stand out of a white pit. The path, over turf, rises to the Downs, passing a lonely flint barn with rich dark roof and a few sycamores for mates. This is the cornland, and the corn bunting sings solitary and monotonous, and the linnets twitter still in flocks. Above and around, the furzy coombes are the home of blackbirds that have a wilder song in this world of infinite corn below and grass above, and but one house. Violets and purple orchis (and its white buds) cloud the turf. On the other side the Downs sink to gently clustered and mounded woods and yet more corn surrounding a thatched flint barn, a granary and cart-lodge, and, again, a farm under sycamores. The soft-ribbed grey sky of after-sunset is slowly moving, kindly and promising rain. The air is still, the road dusty, but the hedges tender green, and the grasshopper lark sings under the wild parsley of the roadside and the sedge-warbler in the sallows. Just beyond is the town by the beautiful domed hill, a town of steep lanes and wallflowers on old walls and such a date as 1577 modestly inscribed on a doorway; its long old street, sternly adapted to the needs of shopkeepers and gentry, looks only old-fashioned, its age being as much repressed as if it were a kind of sin or originality. This is that spirit which would quarrel with the stars for not being in straight lines like print, the spirit of one who, having been disturbed while shaving by the sight of a favourite cat in the midst of her lovers and behaving after the manner of her kind, gives orders during the long mid-day meal that she shall be drowned forthwith, or--no--to-morrow, which is Monday. This is that spirit which says--