In those days, however, a man might ride from "eve to morn, from morn to dewy eve," and hear no sound more human than the deep "belling" of the red deer, if it chanced to be in the balmy month of June; the angry grunt of the tusky boar, startled from his mud-bath in some black morass; or, it may be, the tremendous rush of the snow-white, black-maned bull, crashing his way through shivered saplings and rent under-brush, mixed with the hoarse cooings of the cushat dove, the rich song-gushes of the merle and mavis, or the laughing scream of the green woodpecker. Happy, if in riding all day in the green leafy twilight, which never, at high noon, admitted one clear ray of daylight, and, long before the sun was down, degenerated into murky gloom, he saw no sights more fearful than the rabbits glancing across the path, and disappearing in the thickets; or the slim doe, daintily picking her way among the heather, with her speckled fawns frolicking around her. Thrice happy, if, as night was falling, cold and gray, the tinkling of some lonely chapel bell might give him note where some true anchorite would share his bed of fern, and meal of pulse and water, or jolly clerk of Copmanhurst would broach the pipe of Malvoisie, bring pasties of the doe, to greet the belated wayfarer. Such was the period, such the region, when, on a glorious July morning, so early that the sun had not yet risen high enough to throw one sweeping yellow ray over the carpet of thick greensward between the long aisles of the forest, or checker it with one cool shadow--while the dew still hung in diamonds on every blade of grass, on every leaf of bush or brackens; while the light blue mists were still rising, thinner and thinner as they soared into the clear air, from many a woodland pool or sleepy streamlet--two men, of the ancient Saxon race, sat watching, as if with some eager expectation, on a low, rounded, grassy slope, the outpost, as it seemed, of a chain of gentle hills, running down eastward to the beautiful brimful Idle.