Page:The Heart of England.djvu/44

 of his own age, or to a shamefaced walk with a girl, or to fishing for tench and eels, or even to a game of cricket. But when he is married all that is past. He leads his horses down to the plough, having some simple thought, a grievance, a recollection, perhaps a hope, running confusedly in his head, and all day he turns it over, repeating himself, exaggerating, puzzling over the meaning of someone's words, floundering in digressions, fitting new words to the wood-pigeon's talk, trying to keep straight and to make up his mind, justifying himself, condemning another, cursing him. Now and then he lifts his eyes to the sky or the wooded hills and his mind catches at an impression which never becomes a thought, but something between a picture and a tune in the head, and its half oblivion is pleasant, when suddenly the plough leaps forward from his relaxing grasp, he shouts "Ah, Charley!" to the leader, mutters a little and settles down again to the grievance or the recollection or the hope, to be disturbed on lucky days by the hounds, perhaps, but otherwise to go on and on; and at noon and evening he takes his horses back to the stable and confronts men with the same simple ejaculations as before, after the last glass possibly reviving his lonely thoughts, but ineffectually. "How Bill does talk!" they say. What wonder that the rustic moralist marks an infant's tomb with the words—

But Richard is no ordinary man, for he is happy and proud, and somewhere in the fields or in the clouds that