a sunken pool darkens, an overgrown swamp glistens; they say that a rider on horseback will vanish there without a trace, but this I could not try, because I had no horse. The low ridges become overcast; I do not know whether it is the droop of the straggling clouds, or the fumes from the ceaselessly oozing earth. A misty veil of rain obscures the region of granite and marsh, the clouds ponderously roll together and for a while a baleful twilight reveals the forlorn stretches of furze, juniper and bracken, which just now were an impenetrable wood.
What is there in man that causes him to hold his breath when he sees so uncanny and mournful a region? Is there something beautiful about it?
Up hill and down dale, up hill and down dale through green Devon between two walls of quickset hedge which divides the broad acres into squares, as in our country the fragrant field-borders, and all the time among old trees, among the sagacious eyes of the flocks, up hill and down dale to the red shore of Devon.
159
