The air was sharp-set; a delicate rime frosted roof and road; the
sea lay hazy and still like a great pearl. Then as the sky stirred
with flush upon flush of warm rosy light, it passed from misty
pearl to opal with heart of flame, from opal to gleaming sapphire.
The earth called, the fields called, the river called--that pied
piper to whose music a man cannot stop his ears. It was with me as
with the Canterbury pilgrims:-


"So priketh hem nature in hir corages;
Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages."


Half an hour later I was away by the early train that carries the
branch mails and a few workmen, and was delivered at the little
wayside station with the letters. The kind air went singing past
as I swung along the reverberating road between the high tree-
crowned banks which we call hedges in merry Devon, with all the
world to myself and the Brethren. A great blackbird flew out with
a loud "chook, chook," and the red of the haw on his yellow bill.
A robin trilled from a low rose-bush; two wrens searched diligently
on a fallen tree for breakfast, quite unconcerned when I rested a
moment beside them; and a shrewmouse slipped across the road
followed directly by its mate. March violets bloomed under the
sheltered hedge with here and there a pale primrose; a frosted
bramble spray still held its autumn tints clinging to the semblance
of the past; and great branches of snowy blackthorn broke the
barren hedgeway as if spring made a mock of winter's snows.