CHAPTER XXIII.
THE BROAD STONE OF HONOUR.
But where has Stangrave been all this while?
Where any given bachelor has been, for any given month, is difficult to say, and no man's business but his own.

But where he happened to be on a certain afternoon in the first week of October, on which he had just heard the news of Alma, was,--upon the hills between Ems and Coblentz.
Walking over a high table-land of stubbles, which would be grass in England; and yet with all its tillage is perhaps not worth more than English grass would be, thanks to that small-farm system much be-praised by some who know not wheat from turnips.

Then along a road, which might be a Devon one, cut in the hill-side, through authentic "Devonian" slate, where the deep chocolate soil is lodged on the top of the upright strata, and a thick coat of moss and wood sedge clusters about the oak-scrub roots, round which the delicate and rare oak-fern mingles its fronds with great blue campanulas; while the "white admirals" and silver-washed "fritillaries" flit round every bramble bed, and the great "purple emperors" come down to drink in the road puddles, and sit, fearless flashing off their velvet wings a blue as of that empyrean which is "dark by excess of light." Down again through cultivated lands, corn and clover, flax and beet, and all the various crops with which the industrious German yeoman ekes out his little patch of soil.

Past the thrifty husbandman himself, as he guides the two milch-kine in his tiny plough, and stops at the furrow's end, to greet you with the hearty German smile and bow; while the little fair-haired maiden, walking beneath the shade of standard cherries, walnuts, and pears, all grey with fruit, fills the cows' mouths with chicory, and wild carnations, and pink saintfoin, and many a fragrant weed which richer England wastes.
Down once more, into a glen; but such a glen as neither England nor America has ever seen; or, please God, ever will see, glorious as it is.
Stangrave, who knew all Europe well, had walked the path before; but he stopped then, as he had done the first time, in awe.

On the right, slope up the bare slate downs, up to the foot of cliffs; but only half of those cliffs God has made.