But now I have discovered our village, the very one that I dreamed in childhood, that you and I pictured together, and I know that at last I have come home. I knew it by the rooks, for I arrived late in the afternoon, and the rooks were flying homeward to the great elms by the church,--groups of them, here, there, and everywhere, black against the sunset. Such a chattering and gossiping, as they went to bed in the treetops! Such joy of home and bedtime! I knew it by the grey church tower in its shelter of green leaves, and the ancient little stone church on the top of the gentle hill among its old, old, lichen-covered tombstones. The village homes, in a straggling row, looked half familiar; the grassy meadow that rolls to the village edge, still more so; and the quaint old Inn, where I spent the night and where I am writing--surely some of my ancestors, centuries ago, slept at that very Inn, for I half remember it all,--low ceilings, latticed windows, stone floor, and great, smothering feather bed. Everywhere, indoors and out, I am aware of forgotten chords of sympathy. Those small boys in short trousers, trudging home on tired legs and little bare feet--"did I pass that way a long time ago?" Did some one back of me in the march of life--my ancestors came from this East country--grow tired and rebel in a village like this and run away to America? In some way, by memory, by prophecy, all seems mine; the worn paths; the hollowed door-stones; the ruddy faces moving up and down the walled streets, and the quiet under the grass in the churchyard. And you are everywhere, interpreting, making me understand, with that insight compounded of silent humour and silent sympathy. I am too tired to do anything to-night but have my tea and bit of toast and egg, and warm my fingers at the open fire, for the evening is chill; but to-morrow I shall go searching for our house, and I know I shall find it, for I have a curious sense that this is not only the place for my home with you, but that some far, far back sense of home broods here. The grey war-cloud drifts closer and grows darker. Namur has fallen into German hands; there are rumours--God grant that they are not true!--that the French and the English troops are retreating. In spite of the entire confidence of the people here in their island security, there is fear in my heart for England, this England which seems so remote from cruel struggle, as if created in some moment of Nature's relenting, when she was almost ready to take back her fell purpose,--it is so full of fragrances, of soft colours of flowers, of softer green of hedgerows and meadows. There is something in you, you Englishmen of finer type, shaped by this beauty, quiet and self-contained, of hill and dale and meadow. Surely in you too I know this quietness, this coolness, the still ways of the streams.