306 Lighting the Lamps

maker had left, stood planted in the ground,
teeth uppermost; beside it a labourer’s bar-
row lay overturned. A few yards away a
thick elderberry bush was growing dim in
the twilight, and its bunches of blossom
looked curiously white and spectral.

I think even W. V. felt it strange to see
this new road so brusquely invading the an-
cient fields. I looked across the frank nat-
ural acres (as if they were a sort of wild
creature), stretching away with their hedge-
rows and old trees to the blue outline of the
hills on the horizon, and wondered how
much longer one might see the rose-red of
sunset showing through interlaced branches,
or the dark knots of coppice silhouetted
against the grey-green breadths of tranquil
twilight.

When we went a little further we caught
sight among the trees of some out-buildings
of the farm. What a lost, pathetic look
they had!

Thinking of the stories in my book, it
seemed to me that the scene before me was
a figure of the change which took place when
the life we know invaded and absorbed the
strange medieval life which we know no