' This, of course, might just
as well have been in early spring; but everything else was deeply
imbued with the sentiment of the later year. There was no stir of
insects in the grass. The sunshine was more golden, and gave less
heat than summer sunshine; and the shadows under the hedge were
somewhat blue and misty. It was only in autumn that you could have
seen the mingled green and yellow of the elm foliage, and the fallen
leaves that lay about the road, and covered the surface of wayside
pools so thickly that the sun was reflected only here and there from
little joints and pinholes in that brown coat of proof; or that your
ear would have been troubled, as you went forward, by the occasional
report of fowling-pieces from all directions and all degrees of
distance.
For a long time this dropping fire was the one sign of human activity
that came to disturb me as I walked. The lanes were profoundly
still. They would have been sad but for the sunshine and the singing
of the larks. And as it was, there came over me at times a feeling
of isolation that was not disagreeable, and yet was enough to make me
quicken my steps eagerly when I saw some one before me on the road.
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