revives from time to time and is that indefinable feeling, that tender
melancholy and "divine despair," and those idle tears of which the poet
says, "I know not what they mean," which gather to the eyes at the
sight of happy autumn fields and of all lovely natural sights familiar
from of old.

To-day, however, looking at the apple blooms, I find the most
beautifying associations and memories not in a far-off past, but in
visionary apple trees seen no longer ago than last autumn!

And this is how it comes about. In this red and green country of Devon
I am apt to meet with adventures quite unlike those experienced in
other counties, only they are mostly adventures of the spirit.

Lying awake at six o'clock last October, in Exeter, and seeing it was a
grey misty morning, my inclination was to sleep again. I only dozed and
was in the twilight condition when the mind is occupied with idle
images and is now in the waking world, now in dreamland. A thought of
the rivers in the red and green country floated through my brain--of
the Clyst among others; then of the villages on the Clyst; of
Broadclyst, Clyst St. Mary, Clyst St. Lawrence, finally of Clyst Hyden;
and although dozing I half laughed to remember how I went searching for
that same village last May and how I wouldn't ask my way of anyone,
just because it was Clyst Hyden, because the name of that little hidden
rustic village had been written in the hearts of some who had passed
away long ago, far far from home:--how then could I fail to find it?--
it would draw my feet like a magnet!

I remembered how I searched among deep lanes, beyond rows and rows of
ancient hedgerow elms, and how I found its little church and thatched