freer children of the forest, field and mountain. Out on the wild
heathery moorland, in the heart of the woods, in the deep bosky
dells, where the pungent scent of moss and pine-boughs fills the air
with invigorating influences, or by the quiet rivers, flowing
peacefully under bending willows and past wide osier-beds, where the
kingfisher swoops down with the sun-ray and the timid moor-hen
paddles to and from her nest among the reeds,--in such haunts as
these, the advent of a warm and brilliant May is fraught with that
tremor of delight which gives birth to beauty, and concerning which
that ancient and picturesque chronicler, Sir Thomas Malory, writes
exultantly: "Like as May moneth flourisheth and flowerth in many
gardens, so in likewise let every man of worship flourish his heart
in this world!"

There was a certain 'man of worship' in the world at the particular
time when this present record of life and love begins, who found
himself very well-disposed to 'flourish his heart' in the Maloryan
manner prescribed, when after many dark days of unseasonable cold
and general atmospheric depression, May at last came in rejoicing.
Seated under broad apple-boughs, which spread around him like a
canopy studded with rosy bud-jewels that shone glossy bright against
the rough dark-brown stems, he surveyed the smiling scenery of his
own garden with an air of satisfaction that was almost boyish,
though his years had run well past forty, and he was a parson to
boot. A gravely sedate demeanour would have seemed the more fitting
facial expression for his age and the generally accepted nature of
his calling,--a kind of deprecatory toleration of the sunshine as
part of the universal 'vanity' of mundane things,--or a
condescending consciousness of the bursting apple-blossoms within
his reach as a kind of inferior earthy circumstance which could