Edwin, who was already hungry with his walk, and was rapidly acquiring a taste for the wine of the country, now became aware of the fact that the dark ceiling was decked with sides of bacon and hams that hung there slowly pickling in the turf smoke that saturated the atmosphere of the room. He was disappointed when his father declined to take any of this delicacy. “Well, a mug of cider, then,” Isaac persisted. He went into an inner chamber down three stone steps, with three china mugs hanging on his hook. “You see, I do be pretty handy with en,” he laughed. They drank their cider solemnly. It was even drier than that which they had drunk for lunch at Wringford, and so free from acidity that all that Edwin could taste was that faint astringent bitterness. It had also a bouquet that was less like the odour of apples than that of a flour-mill. A wonderful drink. . . . They said good-bye, and Isaac, who seemed to Edwin the most kindly and patient creature he had ever met, showed them to the door. By this time the sun was setting, and the cool wind from the west had freshened. Edwin saw, for the first time, the huge panorama on which they had turned their backs as they climbed the hill to the Holloway. Perhaps it was the strangeness of all his recent experience; perhaps, partly, the exhilaration that proceeded from Isaac’s cider, but the sight struck Edwin as one of greater magnificence than any he had ever seen before. From their feet the whole country sloped in a series of hilly waves to the shores of the channel, and that muddy sea now shone from coast to coast in a blaze of tawny light: now truly, for the first time, one of the gateways of the world. And beyond the channel stood the heaped mountains of Wales, very wild and black in their vastness. The sight was so impressive that on their way down the lane they did not speak. At last Edwin said,— “I think Aunt Lydia has a very beautiful face. She looks like some old grand lady.” “She is very like your grandfather,” said his father. “She must be over ninety. It is a great age.” And on the way home Edwin began to imagine what his strange grandfather the dowser must have been, with the figure of the lonely farmer, his black beard and hair, and his great-aunt Lydia’s noble features and piercing eyes. II