The Abbey
The fresh wind blew cheerily as we raced, my friend and I, across a long stretch of rich fen-land. The sunlight, falling somewhat dimly through a golden haze, lay very pleasantly on the large pasture-fields. There are few things more beautiful, I think, than these great level plains； they give one a delightful sense of space and repose. The distant lines of trees, the far-off church towers, the long dykes, the hamlets half-hidden in orchards, the "sky-space and field-silence," give one a feeling of quiet rustic life lived on a large and simple scale, which seems the natural life of the world.
Our goal was the remains of an old religious house, now a farm. We were soon at the place； it stood on a very gentle rising ground, once an island above the fen. Two great columns of the Abbey Church served as gate-posts. The house itself lay a little back from the road, a comfortable cluster of big barns and outhouses, with great walnut trees all about, in the middle of an a

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