On a day when May was growing old, everything up at Ardmuirland was
green and gold except the sky, and that was mostly blue and gold.
Gorse and broom were in full blossom, so that on all sides the outlook
was glorious!

Looking through my field-glasses to discover the meaning of a column of
dense smoke, which seemed to be rising from a hill in the distance, I
found myself gazing at a forest in flames! Fire--a very wall of
fire--seemed to extend for miles along a dense tract of woodland! So
seemingly fierce the blaze that it lighted up with golden gleams the
tower of a distant church beyond the wood! Yet, as I looked steadily,
it became evident that the flames neither diminished nor increased;
presently I discovered that the column of smoke rose from a spot
entirely different--more to the foreground. In the end I had to
confess with reluctance that my eyes had been deceived; there was no
sensational forest fire at all! What I had seen was but the sunshine
on an expanse of yellow bloom on some rising ground beyond the belt of
woodland, and on the old church tower, while a rare cloud shaded the
nearer prospect.

What a silly goat I called myself! Looking nearer home I saw the same
red-gold glow, which needed but the sunshine to wake it into flame.
The disused quarry, not half a mile away, where the sun was bright,
might have been an open gold mine--so brilliant the shining of its
wealth of broom bushes! The hedge of gorse which bordered the road on
both sides had no speck of green to mar its splendor.


"All the world is turning golden, turning golden.