dawdled at hand and watched the sport. A pearly clearness, caught from
the clouds, characterised earth as well as air, and proved that every
world-picture depends for atmosphere and colour upon the sky-picture
extended above it. Again there was movement and some music, for the
magic of the wind in a landscape's nearer planes is responsible for
both. The wooded valley lay under a grey and breezy forenoon; swaying
alders marked each intermittent gust with a silver ripple of upturned
foliage, and still reaches of the river similarly answered the wind with
hurrying flickers and furrows of dimpled light. Through its transparent
flood, where the waters ran in shadow and escaped reflections, the river
revealed a bed of ruddy brown and rich amber. This harmonious colouring
proceeded from the pebbly bottom, where a medley of warm agate tones
spread and shimmered, like some far-reaching mosaic beneath the crystal.
Above Teign's shrunken current extended oak and ash, while her banks
bore splendid concourse of the wild water-loving dwellers in that happy
valley. Meadowsweet nodded creamy crests; hemlock and fool's parsley and
seeding willow-herb crowded together beneath far-scattered filigree of
honeysuckles and brambles with berries, some ripe, some red; while the
scarlet corals of briar and white bryony gemmed every riotous trailing
thicket, dene, and dingle along the river's brink; and in the grassy
spaces between rose little chrysoprase steeples of wood sage all set in
shining fern. Upon the boulders in midstream subaqueous mosses, now
revealed and starved by the drought, died hard, and the seeds of
grasses, figworts, and persicarias thrust up flower and foliage,
flourishing in unwonted spots from which the next freshet would rudely
tear them. Insect life did not abundantly manifest itself, for the day
was sunless; but now and again, with crisp rattle of his gauze wings, a
dragon-fly flashed along the river. Through these scenes the Teign
rolled drowsily and with feeble pulses. Upon one bank rose the confines
of Whiddon; on the other, abrupt and interspersed with gulleys of