signal fire. Surely the whole of Wiltshire can see us up here. Ay, and Hants and Dorset to boot—and you can see them if you will, the one south, the other west; and if you have any imagination to pierce that soft blue circle of haze of which we are the centre, you shall see Somerset and Gloucester and Oxford and all the other noble counties of England. Yes, here we are, with nothing between us and God's sky, and no sound in our ears but the calling of the larks and the song of this clean wind in the grasses.
And my exasperating chatter? Certainly.
So! Sit there—a cigarette?—and fill your eyes while I get my painting things out. For I am not at all daunted by this landscape—now that my new colours have come.
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You perceive, sir, that this Beacon Down has got in the way of our river. Hence this large horseshoe bend that the Clere makes there below us. Now you can see the whole of the water that I fish. There's the mill, beside the church tower among the elms, where that small road has just crawled down through the chalk hills from Little Harmony to meet the valley highway. And there is Willows just below us. Do you mark the thatch of our cottage, there, between the
