had not yet begun to turn the leaves, the different shades of green were most striking.  A gigantic ash tree on the far side of the river stood out in bold relief, its lighter leaves being in striking contrast to the dark firs in the background.  Then walnut and hazel, beech and chestnut all offered infinite variety of shape and foliage.  The river here had been broadened to a width of some ninety feet, and an island had been made.  The place seemed to be a veritable sportsman’s paradise!  Dearly would Isaac Walton have loved to dwell here!  From the windows of the old house he would have loved to listen to the splash of the trout, the cawing of the rooks, and the quack of the waterfowl, while all the air is filled with the cooing of doves and the songs of birds.  At night he could have heard the murmuring waterfall amid a stillness only broken at intervals by the scream of the owl, the clatter of the goatsucker, or the weird barking of the foxes:  for not two hundred yards from the house and practically in the garden, is a fox earth that has never been without a litter of, cubs for forty years!

In an ivy-covered house in the stable-yard I saw a very large number of foxes’ noses nailed to boards of wood—­as Sir Roger de Coverley used to nail them.  They appeared to have been slain by one Dick Turpin, huntsman to the Vale of White Horse hounds, some thirty or forty years ago, when a quondam master of those hounds lived in this old place.

What a charm there is in an old-fashioned English garden!  The great tall hollyhocks and phlox, the bright orange marigolds and large purple poppies.  The beds and borders crammed with cloves and many-coloured asters, the sweet blue of the cornflower, and the little lobelias.  Zinneas, too, of all colours; dahlias, tall stalks of anenome japonica, and such tangled masses of stocks!  As I walked down by the old garden wall, whereon lots of roses hung their dainty heads, I thought I had never seen grass so green and fresh looking, except in certain parts of Ireland.

But the wild flowers by the silent river pleased me best of all.  Such a medley of graceful, fragrant meadow-sweet, and tall, rough-leaved willow-herbs with their lovely pink flowers.  Light blue scorpion-grasses and forget-me-nots were there too, not only among the sword-flags and the tall fescue-grasses by the bank, but little islands of them dotted about a over the brook.  Thyme-scented water-mint, with lilac-tinted spikes and downy stalks, was almost lost amongst the taller wild flowers and the “segs” that fringed the brook-side.

There are no flowers like the wild ones; they last right through the summer and autumn—­yet we can never have enough of them, never cease wondering at their marvellous delicacy and beauty.

Darting straight up stream on the wings of the soft south wind comes a kingfisher clothed in priceless jewelry, sparkling in the sun:  sapphire and amethyst on his bright blue back, rubies on his ruddy breast, and diamonds round his princely neck.  Monarch he is of silvery stream, and petty tyrant of the silvery fish.