landscape. It is no thicker in the river bottom than on the hills;
it is everywhere the same. The field-paths are in many places a
foot deep in mud, for the autumn has been wet. They are ploughing
the Ten Acres, and the plough is going along the top ridge so that
horses and men are distinctly outlined, two men and four horses, but
the pace is slow, for the ground is very heavy. I can just hear the
ploughman talking to his team. The upturned earth is more beautiful
in these parts than I have seen it elsewhere--a rich, reddish brown,
for there is iron in it. The sides of the clods which are smoothed
by the ploughshare shine like silver even in this dull light. I
pass through the hop-garden. The poles are stacked and a beginning
has just been made with the weeds. A little further on is the
farmhouse. It lies in the hollow and there is no road to it, save a
cart-track. The nearest hard road is half a mile distant. The
footpath crosses the farmyard. The house is whitewashed plaster and
black-timbered, and surrounded by cattle-pens in which the oxen and
cows stand almost up to their knees in slush. A motionless ox looks
over the bar of his pen and turns his eyes to me and my dog as we
pass. It is now twelve, and it is the dinner-hour. The horses have
stopped work and are steaming with sweat under the hayrick. The men
are sitting in the barn. Leaving the farmyard I go down to the
brook which steals round the wood and stop for a few minutes on the
foot-bridge. I can hear the little stream in the gully about twenty
feet below, continually changing its note, which nevertheless is
always the same. In the wood not a leaf falls. O eternal sleep,
death of the passions, the burial of failures, follies, bitter
recollections, the end of fears, welcome sleep!