enrod was minting its gold, and a first faint suggestion of autumn breathed in the sleepy air. Madrigal tore off his linen collar, stuffed it in his pocket, and fell to quoting Keats. Doggerel, having uttered some painful words about the old cider traffic, now evaporated, Madrigal bestirred his memory of the Ode to Autumn. "Or by a cider press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours." Madrigal is a man of well-stored mind, and as the wayfarers tripped nimbly along the ties, where wild flowers embroider the old cuttings and deserted farms stand crumbling among knotted apple trees, he beguiled the journey with varied speculation and discourse.
At a long-abandoned station known as Foxcroft—which is now only a quarry, and has the air of some mining settlement of the far West—the walkers began to understand something of the secret of this region. It is a fox-hunting country (according to the map, the next station on this mystic line was called The Hunt) and from here on they caught glimpses of the life of that picturesque person known as the "country gentleman." There were jumping barriers for horses erected in the meadows; rows of kennels, and a red-cheeked squire with a riding crop and gaiters striding along the road. Along that rolling valley, with whispering cornfields and fair white mansions lingering among trees, is the tint and contour of rural England, long-settled, opulent and serene. In one thing only does it lack English charm: there are no old
