360
aring of previous cases--the Essays and Reviews case above all--upon the suit. The antecedents of the counsel employed on both sides, the idiosyncrasies of the judge, the probable length of the trial; their talk ranged round these matters, without ever striking deeper. It was assumed between them that the expulsion of the Modernist clergy was only a question of months--possibly weeks. Once indeed Meynell referred slightly to the agitation in the country, to the growing snowball of the petition to Parliament, to the now certain introduction of a Bill "To promote an amended constitution for the Church of England." The Bishop's eyebrows went up, his lip twitched. It was the scorn of a spiritual aristocracy threatened by the populace.
But in general they talked with extraordinary frankness and mutual good feeling; and they grasped hands more than cordially at the end. They might have been two generals, meeting before a battle, under the white flag.
* * * * *
Still the same mild January weather; with unseasonable shoots putting forth, and forebodings on the part of all garden-lovers, as fresh and resentful as though such forebodings, with their fulfilments, were not the natural portion of all English gardeners.
In the Westmoreland dales, the month was rainier than elsewhere, but if possible, milder. Yellow buds were already foolishly breaking on the gorse, and weak primroses, as though afraid to venture, and yet venturing, were to be found in the depths of many woods.
Meynell had slept at Whindale. In the morning a trap conveyed him and his bag to the farmhouse at the head of the valley; and the winter sun had only just scattered the mists from the dale when, stick in hand, he found himself on the road to Mrs. Elsmere's little house, Burwood.
With every step his jaded spirits rose. He was a passionate lover of mountains, with that modern spirit which finds in them man's best refuge from modernness. The damp fragrance of the mossy banks and bare hedges; the racing fres