In the woods hard by a woodpecker was tapping. He saw a cock pheasant streaming in glorious flight over a broad-backed hedge. And across the hollow of the Weald cuckoos everywhere were calling, and flying as they called. He closed his eyes and listened. The Weald seemed to him an immense bowl of nectar, brimming and beaded. He was floating in it; and the tiny bubbles all about him were popping off with a soft delicious sound--_Cuck-oo! Cuck-oo!_ Then he came to earth to see the train bundling out of the station with a callous grin. It was significant of Ernie's weakness and his strength that he didn't mind. Indeed he was glad. He left the station and plunged like a swimmer into the sea of sound and colour, opening his chest and breathing it in. The wealth of green amazed him. It filled and fulfilled his heart. He caught it up in both hands, as it were, and poured it over his thirsting flesh. Abundant, yet light as froth, it overflowed all things, hedges, woods and pastures; splashing with brightest emerald the walls and roofs of the cottages, russet-timbered and Sussex-tiled. Here and there in an old garden, set in the green, was a laburnum like a fountain of gold, a splash of lilac in lovely mourning against the yews, a chestnut lighted with a myriad spray of bloom. The pink May had succeeded the white; and clematis garlanded the hedges. There was a wonderful stillness everywhere, and the atmosphere was bright and hard. After a dry month the grass was very forward. The oak-trees stood up to their knees in hay that was yellow with buttercups, the wind rustling through it like a tide. The foliage of the oaks was still faintly bronzed. Steadfast, old, and very grim in all this faerie, they bore themselves as lords of the Forest by right of conquest and long inheritance. Ernie nodded greeting at them. Their uncompromising air amused him. They were not his tree: for he was a hill-man; and the oaks belonged to the Weald, which in its turn clearly belonged to them. He did not love them; but he admired and respected them for their sturdy independence of character, if he laughed a little at their English self-righteousness and dogmatic air. They were of England too in their determination not to show emotion: for they appeared not to be moving; yet he could see a wind was flowing through them, while in the shadow of them mares-in-foal were flicking their tails. Ernie recognized with joy that he was returning to the country he had left. The gang of men he came on at the end of a lane, asphalting a main-road, the rare car dashing along with a swirling tail of dust between green hedges, disturbed but little his peace of mind. He was home again--in Old England--the heart of whose heart was Sussex.