horse-chestnut, drooping with the late frosts, could not yet keep out
the sunshine with their broad green. A white spot on the footpath yonder
was where the bloom had fallen from a blackthorn bush.

The note of the tree-pipit came from over the corn--there were some
detached oaks away in the midst of the field, and the birds were
doubtless flying continually up and down between the wheat and the
branches. A willow-wren sang plaintively in the plantation behind, and
once a cuckoo called at a distance. How beautiful is the sunshine! The
very dust of the road at my feet seemed to glow with whiteness, to be
lit up by it, and to become another thing. This spot henceforward was a
place of pilgrimage.

Looking that morning over the parapet of the bridge, down stream, there
was a dead branch at the mouth of the arch, it had caught and got fixed
while it floated along. A quantity of aquatic weeds coming down the
stream had drifted against the branch and remained entangled in it.
Fresh weeds were still coming and adding to the mass, which had
attracted a water-rat.

Perched on the branch the little brown creature bent forward over the
surface, and with its two forepaws drew towards it the slender thread of
a weed, exactly as with hands. Holding the thread in the paws, it
nibbled it, eating the sweet and tender portion, feeding without fear
though but a few feet away, and precisely beneath me.

In a minute the surface of the current was disturbed by larger ripples.
There had been a ripple caused by the draught through the arch, but this
was now increased. Directly afterwards a moorhen swam out, and began to
search among the edge of the tangled weeds. So long as I was perfectly