COUNTRY LIFE
THERE is nothing so beautiful as a wooded valley in the Welsh mountains at this time of year. The rivers are rising again, and the deciduous trees are shedding leaves that strew the ground at every turn. The colours are the soft colours of autumn, the rust that has come on the bracken, the reds and golds that are on the beech; and, if contrast is needed, here and there one strikes a belt of spruce where the wind is hushed and no leaves roll ph the road. We came down such a valley at the week-end; passing through a quiet village that seemed roofed by a long tunnel of treetops. Two old men stood look- ing over a stone wall. They appeared to be contemplating the leaves that floated on a pool. There was no fishing, as there might have been a few days before. The last of the anglers has taken himself and his rods back to the place from which he came, and the river and the people who live by it are going their quiet way. Only once in a while a school of cyclists comes sailing through the street, or two or three climbers clump past, burdened with ropes-. and dragged backwards by gargantuan rucksacks; but they are bound for the hostels, and, when the jingle of their bells and the clatter of their boots grows faint, a small boy trundles a barrel-hoop down the road and the leaves rise in little whorls as the wind blows.
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