cut. In these fields the groups of men and women were thickest. The
long scythes were swung mightily by both; the voices, a gay treble of
human speech, rose above the metallic swish of the sharp blades cutting
into the succulent grasses.

The fat pasture lands rose and sank in undulations as rounded as the
nascent breasts of a young Greek maiden. A medley of color played its
charming variations over fields, over acres of poppies, over plains of
red clover, over the backs of spotted cattle, mixing, mingling,
blending a thousand twists and turns into one exquisite, harmonious
whole. There was no discordant note, not one harsh contrast; even the
hay-ricks seemed to have been modelled rather than pitched into shape;
their sloping sides and finely pointed apexes giving them the dignity
of structural intent.

Why should not a peasant, in blouse and sabots, with a grinning idiot
face, have put the picture out? But he did not. He was walking, or
rather waddling, toward us, between two green walls that rose to be
arched by elms that hid the blue of the sky. This lane was the kind of
lane one sees only in Devonshire and in Normandy. There are lanes and
lanes, as, to quote our friend the cobbler, there are cures and cures.
But only in these above-named countries can one count on walking
straight into the heart of an emerald, if one turns from the high-road
into a lane. The trees, in these Devonshire and Normandy by-paths, have
ways of their own of vaulting into space; the hedges are thicker,
sweeter, more vocal with insect and song notes than elsewhere; the
roadway itself is softer to the foot, and narrower--only two are
expected to walk therein.

It was through such a lane as this that the coarse, animal shape of a