CHAPTER VII.
ALVANLEY TO THE RESCUE!
It is a midsummer night of rare beauty. The dew lies heavy upon the grass, telling of the morrow's heat. The broad moon is at the full, making a light almost equal to that of day. The air, which has been so sultry, is now cool and refreshing, and comes floating through the lime-tree boughs with the most delicious perfume. The quivering leaves of the overhanging trees are stirred by its rich breath, and throb as though with rapture. Through the dewy screen of leaves and interlacing boughs, the wandering moonbeams pass, dancing and leaping, and making bright floating circles on the shaded floor of the road beneath. In the hedgerows honeysuckles hang their links of sweetness, and mingle their odours with the scent of the newly-mown hay: the ripening corn gently sways in the soft night breeze; sea gulls are settling down into their rocky nests; and the querulous note of a quail reaches me from a distant meadow. A little wayside brook comes babbling on toward the sea, with a light musical song of ferns, and foxgloves, and flowering heather; while the sonorous roll of the ocean, breaking on the beach below, fills up, with its deep diapason, the summer-hymn of Nature.
I look down through the vista of chequered light and shade, and I see the great cliffs, and over them the wide expanse of sea, and the blue-paved heaven thick inlaid
