Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/90

 feeling that a small dose of tobacco would suit my present condition very well, determined to climb the turret staircase, and enjoy a quiet smoke in the observatory.

The room was charming. There were large windows in it, and the view was most extensive, taking in scenery of a very varied kind hill and dale, wood, river, and plain. The signs of habitation were not numerous, the country being but thinly populated: still there were cottages and farmhouses scattered here and there, and even one or two villages in the distance. I lighted my cigar and gave myself up to tranquil enjoyment of the scene before me.

As I sat thus, the clock of my host's church struck three. Remembering that to be the hour of Mr. Irwin's interview with Harding, my thoughts reverted to the subject of the widow's debt, and to the good-nature which my old friend had displayed in giving himself so much trouble and undertaking such a thankless office. My mind did not dwell long on these things, however. I happened to catch sight of the telescope, which was put away in a corner of the room; and being restless, and not in a mood in which total inaction was agreeable to me, I determined to have it out and examine the details of the landscape which I had just been studying on a large scale.

The day was very favourable for my purpose. The sun was shining and there was an east wind: a combination which often produces a remarkable clearness in the atmosphere. Circumstances could not possibly be more suitable for telescopic operations, so placing the instrument on its stand before one of the open windows, I sat down and commenced my survey.

It was a superb telescope, and although I knew it well, and had often used it before, I found myself still astonished at its power and range. I set myself to trying experiments as to the extent of its capacity, taking the time by the church clock of a village two miles off, trying to make out what people were doing in the extreme distance, and in other ways putting the capabilities of the instrument to the test. That done, with results of the most satisfactory kind, I went to work in a more leisurely fashion, shifting the glass from point to point of the landscape, as the fancy took me, and enjoying the delicious little circular pictures, which, in endless variety, seemed to fit themselves, one after another, into the end of the instrument. The little round pictures were some of them very pretty. Here was one—the first the telescope showed me—in the front of which was a small patch of purple earth just brought under the plough. A little copse bounded one side of this arable land; there was a very bright green field in the distance; and in the foreground the plough itself was crawling slowly along, drawn by a couple of ponderous and sturdy horses, a bay and a white, whose course was directed by an old man with a blue neckerchief, the ends hanging loose, a boy being in attendance to turn the horses at the end of each furrow, and generally to keep them up to their work.

A turn of the glass, and another picture takes its place. A road-side ale-house now. One of the upper Windows has a muslin half blind betokening the guest chamber, another on the ground floor is ornamented with a red curtain—the tap-room, this, where convivial spirits congregate on Saturday nights. The inn has a painted sign; somebody in a scarlet coat and with something on his head which I can't quite make out; perhaps it is a three-cornered hat, and perhaps the inn is dedicated to the inevitable Marquis of Granby. Stay! I recollect now seeing such an inn in one of my walks in the neighbourhood. It is the Marquis of Granby, as I well remember. An empty cart is standing in front of the house, the driver watering his horses, and beering himself, just before the house door, where I can see him plainly.

Another and a more extensive turn, and the little railway station comes within the limits of the magic circle. Not much to interest here: a small whitewashed, slate-roofed, formal building, hard, and angular, and hideous. A lot of sacks piled up against the wall, waiting to be sent off by the luggage train, a great signal post rising into the air, a row of telegraphic poles stretching away in perspective.

Now a prosperous farmstead, with a big thatched house, where the farmer and his family reside, with well-preserved sheds and outhouses: there is a straw-yard, too, with cattle standing knee-deep, and eating out of racks well found in hay; and there are pigs wallowing in the mire, and there are cocks and hens jerking themselves hither and thither, and pecking, and generally fussing, as their manner is. This picture in its circular frame pleases me well, and so does the next. A gentleman's seat of the entirely comfortable, not of the showy and ostentatious, sort. The grounds are large enough to be called a park, and the house lying rather low, as it was the fashion to build a century or two ago, stands in the midst of them, with a trim and pleasantly formal flower-garden round about it. It is a red brick house of the Hanoverian time, with a rather high slate (green slate) roof, with dormer windows in it. The other windows have white sashes which are flush with the wall, and not, as in these days, sunk in a recess.

I look long on this scene, and then, not without reluctance, shift my glass, and turning away from human habitations, begin to examine the more retired and unfrequented parts of the landscape. The magic circle now encloses nothing but trees and meadows, and little quiet nooks and corners, where the lazy cows stand about in shady places too idle even to feed, or where the crows blacken the very ground by their numbers, unmolested by shouting boys, unscared by even the old traditional hat and coat upon a stick. I come presently to a little bright green paddock, with a pony feeding in it a refreshing little round picture pleasant to dwell on. There is a pond in one corner of the