“The sun slants to the horizon early. There is a sense of the world turning a shoulder away from the sun. Twilight comes quickly. Another year is passing away. At first the ground of the stubble is hard underfoot. The corn’s roots sucked its moisture. Showers fall. Day by day the stubble-walker feels a softening of the surface he treads. Latterly it is like walking on a pile carpet. As it softens, the day when the plough will enter it draws nearer. These pleasant strolls are doomed. A man may have made a little daily route for himself, such is habit. At first he goes this way one day, another way the next – across the middle of a stubble today, yesterday along by that hedge, tomorrow beside the ash trees. Yet in a week or so he comes to take a favourite route at a favourite hour. Evening is best. There is half an hour of twilight. The sun, fallen into a welter of clouds, scatters fire into the tree-tops. The glow, at setting out too bright to look on, swiftly fades to cool colours. Watching the sky, dwelling on fat woods, a man can let his feet stray; no path to miss, no clod to stumble over. Called back to earth by a whirr of wings or the swish of a surprised rabbit, he can note speedwell and charlock, pluck a leaf of wild mint and smell it, mixed with an inhalation of wood smoke from afar.”