CHAPTER Eight: A Gold Day At Silchester.
It is little to a man's profit to go far afield if his chief pleasure be in wild life, his main object to get nearer to the creatures, to grow day by day more intimate with them, and to see each day some new thing.
Yet the distance has the same fascination for him as for another--the call is as sweet and persistent in his ears.

If he is on a green level country with blue hills on the horizon, then, especially in the early morning, is the call sweetest, most irresistible.

Come away--come away: this blue world has better things than any in that green, too familiar place.

The startling scream of the jay--you have heard it a thousand times.

It is pretty to watch the squirrel in his chestnut-red coat among the oaks in their fresh green foliage, full of fun as a bright child, eating his apple like a child, only it is an oak-apple, shining white or white and rosy-red, in his little paws; but you have seen it so many times--come away: It was not this voice alone which made me forsake the green oaks of Silchester and Pamber Forest, to ramble for a season hither and thither in Wiltshire, Dorset, and Somerset; there was something for me to do in those places, but the call made me glad to go.