ROUND ABOUT A GREAT ESTATE

BY

RICHARD JEFFERIES

AUTHOR OF

'THE GAMEKEEPER AT HOME''WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY''THE AMATEUR POACHER''GREEN FERNE FARM''HODGE AND HIS MASTERS'

LONDONSMITH, ELDER, & CO. , 15 WATERLOO PLACE1880

[_All rights reserved_]

PREFACE. 

There is an old story which in respect of a modern application maybear re-telling. Once upon a time in a lonely 'coombe-bottom' of theDowns, where there was neither church, chapel, nor public building ofany kind, there lived a cottage-girl who had never seen anything ofcivilisation. A friend, however, having gone out to service in amarket-town some few miles distant, she one day walked in to see her, and was shown the wonders of the place, the railway, the post-office, the hotels, and so forth. In the evening the friend accompanied her ashort way on the return journey, and as they went out of the town, they passed the church. Looking suddenly up at the tower, the visitorexclaimed, 'Lard-a-mussy! you've got another moon here. Yourn have gotfigures all round un!' In her excitement, and prepared to see marvels, she had mistaken the large dial of the church clock for a moon of adifferent kind to the one which shone upon her native home. This oldtale, familiar to country folk as an illustration of simplicity, hasto-day a wider meaning. Until recent years the population dwelling invillages and hamlets, and even in little rural towns, saw indeed thesun by day and the moon by night, and learned the traditions andcustoms of their forefathers, such as had been handed down forgenerations. But now a new illumination has fallen upon these far-awayplaces. The cottager is no longer ignorant, and his child is wellgrounded in rudimentary education, reads and writes with facility, andis not without knowledge of the higher sort. Thus there is now anothermoon with the figures of education all round it. In this book somenotes have been made of the former state of things before it passesaway entirely. But I would not have it therefore thought that I wishit to continue or return. My sympathies and hopes are with the lightof the future, only I should like it to come from nature. The clockshould be read by the sunshine, not the sun timed by the clock. Thelatter is indeed impossible, for though all the clocks in the worldshould declare the hour of dawn to be midnight, the sun will presentlyrise just the same. 

RICHARD JEFFERIES. 

CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER PAGE

 I. OKEBOURNE CHACE. FELLING TREES. 1

 II. CICELY. THE BROOK. 20

 III. A PACK OF STOATS. BIRDS. 42

 IV. HAMLET FOLK. 61

 V. WIND-ANEMONES. THE FISHPOND. 82

 VI. A FARMER OF THE OLDEN TIMES. 103

 VII. THE CUCKOO-FIELDS. 125

VIII. CICELY'S DAIRY. HILARY'S TALK. 144

 IX. THE WATER-MILL. FIELD NAMES. 163

 X. THE COOMBE-BOTTOM. CONCLUSION. 183

ROUND ABOUT A GREAT ESTATE. 

CHAPTER I. 

OKEBOURNE CHACE. FELLING TREES. 

The great house at Okebourne Chace stands in the midst of the park, and from the southern windows no dwellings are visible. Near at handthe trees appear isolated, but further away insensibly gathertogether, and above them rises the distant Down crowned with fourtumuli. Among several private paths which traverse the park there isone that, passing through a belt of ash wood, enters the meadows. Sometimes following the hedges and sometimes crossing the angles, thispath finally ends, after about a mile, in the garden surrounding alarge thatched farmhouse. In the maps of the parish it has probablyanother name, but from being so long inhabited by the Lucketts it isalways spoken of as Lucketts' Place. 

The house itself and ninety acres of grass land have been theirfreehold for many generations; in fact, although there is no actualdeed of entail, the property is as strictly preserved in the familyand descends from heir to heir as regularly as the great estate andmansion adjacent. Old Hilary Luckett--though familiarly called 'old, 'he is physically in the prime of life--is probably about the mostindependent man in the county. Yet he is on terms of more thangoodwill with the great house, and rents one of the largest farms onthe estate, somewhere between six and seven hundred acres. He has theright of shooting, and in the course of years privilege afterprivilege has been granted, till Hilary is now as free of the warrenas the owner of the charter himself. If you should be visitingOkebourne Chace, and any question should arise whether of horses, dog, or gun, you are sure to be referred to Hilary. Hilary knows all aboutit: he is the authority thereabout on all matters concerning game. Isit proposed to plant fresh covers? Hilary's opinion is asked. Is itproposed to thin out some of the older trees; what does Hilary say?

It is a fact that people really believe no part of a partridge is evertaken away after being set before him. Neither bones nor sinewsremain: so fond is he of the brown bird. Having eaten the breast, andthe juicy leg and the delicate wing, he next proceeds to suck thebones; for game to be thoroughly enjoyed should be eaten like amince-pie, in the fingers. There is always one bone with a sweeterflavour than the rest, just at the joint or fracture: it varies inevery bird according to the chance of the cooking, but, havingdiscovered it, put it aside for further and more strict attention. Presently he begins to grind up the bones in his strong teeth, commencing with the smallest. His teeth are not now so powerful aswhen in younger days he used to lift a sack of wheat with them, or thefull milking-bucket up to the level of the copper in the dairy. Stillthey gradually reduce the slender skeleton. The feat is not sodifficult if the bird has been well hung. 

He has the right to shoot, and need take no precautions. But, in fact, a farmer, whether he has liberty or not, can usually amuse himselfoccasionally in that way. If his labourer sees him quietly slipping upbeside the hedge with his double-barrel towards the copse in thecorner where a pheasant has been heard several times lately, thelabourer watches him with delight, and says nothing. Should anyone inauthority ask where that gun went off, the labourer 'thenks it wur th'birdkippur up in th' Dree Vurlong, you. ' Presently the pheasant hangsin the farmer's cellar, his long tail sweeping the top of the XXXcask; and the 'servant-wench, ' who is in and out all day, also saysnothing. Nor can anything exceed the care with which she disposes ofthe feathers when she picks the bird. There is a thorough sympathybetween master and man so far. Hilary himself, with all that greatestate to sport over, cannot at times refrain from stepping across theboundary. His landlord once, it is whispered, was out with Hilaryshooting, and they became so absent-minded while discussing someinteresting subject as to wander several fields beyond the propertybefore they discovered their mistake. 

At Lucketts' Place the favourite partridge always comes up for supper:a pleasant meal that nowadays can rarely be had out of a farmhouse. Then the bright light from the burning log outshines the lamp, andglances rosy on the silver tankard standing under a glass shade on abracket against the wall. Hilary's father won it near half a centurysince in some heats that were run on the Downs on the old racecourse, before it was ploughed up. For the wicked turnip is responsible forthe destruction of old England; far more so than the steam-engine. 

Waste lands all glorious with golden blossoming furze, with purplefoxglove, or curious orchis hiding in stray corners; wild moor-likelands, beautiful with heaths and honey-bottle; grand stretches ofsloping downs where the hares hid in the grass, and where all thehorses in the kingdom might gallop at their will; these have beenoverthrown with the plough because of the turnip. As the root cropscame in, the rage began for thinning the hedges and grubbing thedouble mounds and killing the young timber, besides putting in thedrains and driving away the wild-ducks. The wicked turnip put diamondson the fingers of the farmer's wife, and presently raised his rent. But now some of the land is getting 'turnip-sick, ' the roots comestringy and small and useless, so that many let it 'vall down. '

After the last crop it is left alone, the couch grows, the docksspread out from the hedges, every species of weed starts up, tillby-and-by the ploughed land becomes green and is called pasture. Thisis a process going on at the present moment, and to which owners ofland should see without delay. Hilary has been looked on somewhatcoldly by other tenants for openly calling the lord of the manor'sattention to it. He sturdily maintains that arable land if laid downfor pasture should be laid down properly--a thing that requires labourand expenditure just the same as other farming operations. So thesilver tankard, won when 'cups' were not so common as now, is amemorial of the old times before the plough turned up the sweet turfof the racecourse. 

Hilary does not bet beyond the modest 'fiver' which a man would bethought unsociable if he did not risk on the horse that carries thecountry's colours. But he is very 'thick' with the racing-people onthe Downs, and supplies the stable with oats, which is, I believe, notan unprofitable commission. The historical anecdote of the Romanemperor who fed his horse on gilded oats reads a little strange whenwe first come across it in youth. But many a race-horse owner hasfound reason since to doubt if it be so wonderful, as his own stud--tojudge by the cost--must live on golden fodder. Now, before I foundthis out about the stable, it happened one spring day that I metHilary in the fields, and listened to a long tirade which he deliveredagainst 'wuts. '

The wheat was then showing a beautiful flag, the despised oats werecoming out in jag, and the black knots on the delicate barley strawwere beginning to be topped with the hail. The flag is the long narrowgreen leaf of the wheat; in jag means the spray-like drooping awn ofthe oat; and the hail is the beard of the barley, which when it iswhite and brittle in harvest-time gets down the back of the neck, irritating the skin of those who work among it. According to Hilary, oats do not flourish on rich land; and when he was young (andeverything was then done right) a farmer who grew oats was looked uponwith contempt, as they were thought only fit for the poorest soil, anda crop that therefore denoted poverty. But nowadays, thundered Hilaryin scorn, all farmers grow oats, and, indeed, anything in preferenceto wheat. 

Afterwards, at the Derby that year, methought I saw Hilary as I passedthe sign of the 'Carrion Crow:' the dead bird dangles from the top ofa tall pole stuck in the sward beside a booth. I lost him in the crowdthen. But later on in autumn, while rambling round the Chace, therecame on a 'skit' of rain, and I made for one of his barns for shelter. There was Hilary in the barn with his men, as busy as they could wellbe, winnowing oats. It seemed to me that especial care was beingtaken, and on asking questions, to which the men silently replied witha grin, Hilary presently blurted out that the dust had to be carefullyremoved, because the grain was for the racing-stable. The daintycreatures up there must have food free from dust, which makes them toothirsty. The hay supplied, for the same reason, had to be shakenbefore being used. No oats would do under 40 lb. The bushel, and theheavier the better. 

Luckett was a man whom every one knew to be 'square;' but, if the talkof the country-side is to be believed, the farmers who have much to dowith the stables do not always come off successful. They sometimesbecome too sharp, and fancy themselves cleverer than a class of menwho, if their stature be not great, are probably the keenest of wit. The farmer who obliges them is invariably repaid with lucrative'tips;' but if he betrays those 'tips' may possibly find hisinformation in turn untrustworthy, and have to sell by auction, anddepart to Texas. Luckett avoids such pitfalls by the simple policy of'squareness, ' which is, perhaps, the wisest of all. When the 'skit'blew past he took his gun from the corner and stepped over the hatch, and came down the path with me, grumbling that all the grain, evenwhere the crop looked well, had threshed out so light. 

Farming had gone utterly to the dogs of late seasons; he thought heshould give up the land he rented, and live on the ninety acresfreehold. In short, to hear him talk, you would think that he wasconferring a very great favour upon his landlord in consenting to holdthat six or seven hundred acres at a rent which has not been alteredthese fifty years at least. But the owner was a very good fellow, andas Hilary said, 'There it is, you see. ' My private opinion is that, despite the late bad seasons, Hilary has long been doing remarkablywell; and as for his landlord, that he would stand by him shoulder toshoulder if defence were needed. 

Much as I admired the timber about the Chace, I could not helpsometimes wishing to have a chop at it. The pleasure of felling treesis never lost. In youth, in manhood--so long as the arm can wield theaxe--the enjoyment is equally keen. As the heavy tool passes over theshoulder the impetus of the swinging motion lightens the weight, andsomething like a thrill passes through the sinews. Why is it sopleasant to strike? What secret instinct is it that makes the deliveryof a blow with axe or hammer so exhilarating? The wilder frenzy of thesword--the fury of striking with the keen blade, which overtakes meneven now when they come hand to hand, and which was once the life ofbattle--seems to arise from the same feeling. Then, as the sharp edgeof the axe cuts deep through the bark into the wood, there is a secondmoment of gratification. The next blow sends a chip spinning aside;and by-the-bye never stand at the side of a woodman, for a chip mayscore your cheek like a slash with a knife. But the shortness of man'sdays will not allow him to cut down many trees. In imagination Isometimes seem to hear the sounds of the axes that have been ringingin the forests of America for a hundred years, and envy the joy of thelumbermen as the tall pines toppled to the fall. Of our English treesthere is none so pleasant to chop as the lime; the steel enters intoit so easily. 

In the enclosed portion of the park at Okebourne the boughs of thetrees descended and swept the sward. Nothing but sheep being permittedto graze there, the trees grew in their natural form, the lower limbsdrooping downwards to the ground. Hedgerow timber is usually'stripped' up at intervals, and the bushes, too, interfere with theexpansion of the branches; while the boughs of trees standing in theopen fields are nibbled off by cattle. But in that part of the park nocattle had fed in the memory of man; so that the lower limbs, droopingby their own weight, came arching to the turf. Each tree thus made aperfect bower. 

The old woodmen who worked in the Chace told me it used to be saidthat elm ought only to be thrown on two days of the year--_i. E. _ the31st of December and the 1st of January. The meaning was that itshould be cut in the very 'dead of the year, ' when the sap hadretired, so that the timber might last longer. The old folk took thegreatest trouble to get their timber well seasoned, which is thereason why the woodwork in old houses has endured so well. Passingunder some elms one June evening, I heard a humming overhead, andfound it was caused by a number of bees and humble-bees busy in theupper branches at a great height from the ground. They were probablyafter the honey-dew. Buttercups do not flourish under trees; in earlysummer, where elms or oaks stand in the mowing-grass, there is often acircle around almost bare of them and merely green, while the rest ofthe meadow glistens with the burnished gold of that beautiful flower. 

The oak is properly regarded as a slow-growing tree, but under certaincircumstances a sapling will shoot up quickly to a wonderful height. When the woodmen cut down a fir plantation in the Chace there was ayoung oak among it that overtopped the firs, and yet its diameter wasso small that it looked no larger than a pole; and the supportingboughs of the firs being now removed it could not uphold itself, butbent so much from the perpendicular as to appear incapable ofwithstanding a gale. The bark of the oak, when stripped and stacked, requires fine weather to dry it, much the same as hay, so that a wetseason like 1879 is very unfavourable. 

In the open glades of the Chace there were noble clumps of beeches, and if you walked quietly under them in the still October days youmight hear a slight but clear and distinct sound above you. This wascaused by the teeth of a squirrel nibbling the beech-nuts, and everynow and then down came pieces of husk rustling through the colouredleaves. Sometimes a nut would fall which he had dropped; and yet, withthe nibbling sound to guide the eye, it was not always easy todistinguish the little creature. But his tail presently betrayed himamong the foliage, far out on a bough where the nuts grew. The husks, if undisturbed, remain on all the winter and till the tree is in fullgreen leaf again; the young nuts are formed about midsummer. 

The black poplars are so much like the aspen as to be easily mistaken, especially as their leaves rustle in the same way. But the true aspenhas a smooth bark, while that of the black poplar is scored or rough. Woodmen always call the aspen the 'asp, ' dropping the termination. Inthe spring the young foliage of the black poplar has a yellow tint. When they cut down the alder poles by the water and peeled them, thesap under the bark as it dried turned as red as if stained. The pathsin spring were strewn with the sheaths of the young leaves and budspushing forth; showers of such brown sheaths came off the hawthornwith every breeze. These, with the catkins, form the first fall fromtree and bush. The second is the flower, as the May, and thehorse-chestnut bloom, whose petals cover the ground. The third fall isthat of the leaf, and the fourth the fruit. 

On the Scotch fir the young green cones are formed about the beginningof June, and then the catkin adjacent to the cone is completelycovered with quantities of pale yellow farina. If handled, it coversthe fingers as though they had been dipped in sulphur-flour; shake thebranch and it flies off, a little cloud of powdery particles. Thescaly bark takes a ruddy tinge, when the sunshine falls upon it, andwould then, I think, be worthy the attention of an artist as much asthe birch bark, whose peculiar mingling of silvery white, orange, andbrown, painters so often endeavour to represent on canvas. There issomething in the Scotch fir, crowned at the top like a palm with itsdark foliage, which, in a way I cannot express or indeed analyse, suggests to my mind the far-away old world of the geologists. 

In the boughs of the birch a mass of twigs sometimes grows so closeand entangled together as to appear like a large nest from a distancewhen the leaves are off. Even as early as December the tomtits attackthe buds, then in their sheaths, of the birch, clinging to the veryextremities of the slender boughs. I once found a young birch growingon the ledge of a brick bridge, outside the parapet, and some forty orfifty feet from the ground. It was about four feet high, quite asapling, and apparently flourishing, though where the roots could findsoil it was difficult to discover. 

The ash tree is slowly disappearing from many places, and owners ofhedgerow and copse would do well to plant ash, which affords a mostuseful wood. Ash poles are plentiful, but ash timber gets scarcer yearby year; for as the present trees are felled there are no young onesrising up to take their place. Consequently ash is becoming dearer, asthe fishermen find; for many of the pleasure yachts which they let outin summer are planked with ash, which answers well for boats which areoften high and dry on the beach, though it would not do if always inthe water. These beach-boats have an oak frame, oak stem andstern-post, beech keel, and are planked with ash. When they requirerepairing, the owners find ash planking scarce and dear. 

Trees may be said to change their garments thrice in the season. Inthe spring the woods at Okebourne were of the tenderest green, which, as the summer drew on, lost its delicacy of hue. Then came the secondor 'midsummer shoot, ' brightening them with fresh leaves and freshgreen. The second shoot of the oak is reddish: there was one oak inthe Chace which after midsummer thus became ruddy from the highest tothe lowest branch; others did not show the change nearly so much. Lastly came the brown and yellow autumn tints. 

CHAPTER II. 

CICELY. THE BROOK. 

In the kitchen at Lucketts' Place there was a stool made by sawing offabout six inches of the butt of a small ash tree. The bark remainedon, and it was not smoothed or trimmed in any way. This mere log wasCicely Luckett's favourite seat as a girl; she was Hilary's onlydaughter. The kitchen had perhaps originally been the house, the resthaving been added to it in the course of years as the mode of lifechanged and increasing civilisation demanded more convenience andcomfort. The walls were quite four feet thick, and the one smalllattice-window in its deep recess scarcely let in sufficient light, even on a summer's day, to dispel the gloom, except at one particulartime. 

The little panes, yellow and green, were but just above the ground, looking out upon the road into the rickyard, so that the birds whichcame searching along among the grasses and pieces of wood throwncarelessly aside against the wall could see into the room. Robins, ofcourse, came every morning, perching on the sill and peering in withthe head held on one side. Blackbird and thrush came, but alwayspassed the window itself quickly, though they stayed without fearwithin a few inches of it on either hand. 

There was an old oak table in the centre of the room--a table so solidthat young Aaron, the strong labourer, could only move it withdifficulty. There was no ceiling properly speaking, the boards of thefloor above and a thick beam which upheld it being only whitewashed;and much of that had scaled off. An oaken door led down a few stepsinto the cellar, and over both cellar and kitchen there sloped a longroof, thatched, whose eaves were but just above the ground. 

Now, when there was no one in the kitchen, as in the afternoon, wheneven the indoor servants had gone out to help in the hayfield, littleCicely used to come in here and sit dreaming on the ash log by thehearth. The rude stool was always placed inside the fireplace, whichwas very broad for burning wood, faggots and split pieces of timber. Bending over the grey ashes, she could see right up the great broadtunnel of the chimney to the blue sky above, which seemed the moredeeply azure, as it does from the bottom of a well. In the eveningswhen she looked up she sometimes saw a star shining above. In theearly mornings of the spring, as she came rushing down to breakfast, the tiny yellow panes of the window which faced the east were all litup and rosy with the rays of the rising sun. 

The beautiful light came through the elms of the rickyard, away fromthe ridge of the distant Down, and then for the first hour of the daythe room was aglow. For quite two hundred years every visible sunrisehad shone in at that window more or less, as the season changed andthe sun rose to the north of east. Perhaps it was that sense ofancient homeliness that caused Cicely, without knowing why, to stealin there alone to dream, for nowhere else indoors could she have beenso far away from the world of to-day. 

Left much to herself, she roamed along the hedgerow as now and then amild day came, soon after the birds had paired, and saw thearrow-shaped, pointed leaves with black spots rising and unrolling atthe sides of the ditches. Many of these seemed to die away presentlywithout producing anything, but from some there pushed up a sharplyconical sheath, from which emerged the spadix of the arum with itsfrill. Thrusting a stick into the loose earth of the bank, she foundthe root, covered with a thick wrinkled skin which peeled easily andleft a white substance like a small potato. Some of the old women whocame into the kitchen used to talk about 'yarbs, ' and she was toldthat this was poisonous and ought not to be touched--the very reasonwhy she slipped into the dry ditch and dug it up. But she started witha sense of guilt as she heard the slow rustle of a snake gliding alongthe mound over the dead, dry leaves of last year. 

In August, when the reapers began to call and ask for work, she foundthe arum stalks, left alone without leaves, surrounded with berries, some green, some ripening red. As the berries ripen, the stalk growsweak and frequently falls prone of its own weight among the grasses. This noisome fruit of clustering berries, like an ear of maize stainedred, they told her was 'snake's victuals, ' and to be avoided; for, bright as was its colour, it was only fit for a reptile's food. 

She knew, too, where to find the first 'crazy Betties, ' whose largeyellow flowers do not wait for the sun, but shine when the March windscatters king's ransoms over the fields. These are the marshmarigolds: there were two places where she gathered them, one besidethe streamlet flowing through the 'Mash, ' a meadow which was almost awater-meadow; and the other inside a withy-bed. She pulled the'cat's-tails, ' as she learned to call the horse-tails, to see the stempart at the joints; and when the mowing-grass began to grow long, picked the cuckoo-flowers and nibbled the stalk and leaflets to essaythe cress-like taste. In the garden, which was full of old-fashionedshrubs and herbs, she watched the bees busy at the sweet-scented'honey-plant, ' and sometimes peered under the sage-bush to look at the'effets' that hid there. 

By the footpath through the meadows there were now small places wherethe mowers had tried their new scythes as they came home, a littlewarm with ale perhaps, from the market town. They cut a yard or two ofgrass as they went through the fields, just to get the swing of thescythe and as a hint to the farmer that it was time to begin. With thefirst June rose in the hedge the haymaking commenced--the two usuallycoincide--and then Cicely fluctuated between the haymakers and themowers, now watching one and now the other. One of the haymaking girlswas very proud because she had not lost a single wooden tooth out ofher rake, for it is easy to break or pull them out. In the next fieldthe mowers, one behind the other in echelon, left each his swathe ashe went. The tall bennets with their purplish anthers, the sorrel, andthe great white 'moon-daisies' fell before them. Cicely would watchtill perhaps the sharp scythe cut a frog, and the poor creaturesquealed with the pain. 

Then away along the hedge to the pond in the corner, all green with'creed, ' or duckweed, when one of the boys about the place would cometimidly up to offer a nest of eggs just taken, and if she would speakto him would tell her about his exploits 'a-nisting, ' about thebombarrel tit--a corruption apparently of nonpareil--and how he hadput the yellow juice of the celandine on his 'wurrut' to cure it. Thenthey pulled the plantain leaves, those that grew by the path, to seewhich could draw out the longest 'cat-gut;' the sinews, as it were, ofthe plant stretching out like the strings of a fiddle. 

In the next meadow the cows had just been turned into fresh grass, andwere lazily rioting in it. They fed in the sunshine with the goldenbuttercups up above their knees, literally wading in gold, their hornsas they held their heads low just visible among the flowers. Some thatwere standing in the furrows were hidden up to their middles by thebuttercups. Their sleek roan and white hides contrasted with the greengrass and the sheen of the flowers: one stood still, chewing the cud, her square face expressive of intense content, her beautifuleye--there is no animal with a more beautiful eye than thecow--following Cicely's motions. At this time of the year, as theygrazed far from the pens, the herd were milked in the corner of thefield, instead of driving them to the yard. 

One afternoon Cicely came quietly through a gap in the hedge by thisparticular corner, thinking to laugh at Aaron's voice, for he milkedthere and sang to the cows, when she saw him sitting on thethree-legged milking-stool, stooping in the attitude of milking, withthe bucket between his knees, but firm asleep, and quite alone in hisglory. He had had too much ale, and dropped asleep while milking thelast cow, and the herd had left him and marched away in stately singlefile down to the pond, as they always drink after the milking. Cicelystole away and said nothing; but presently Aaron was missed and asearch made, and he was discovered by the other men still sleeping. Poor 'young Aaron' got into nearly as much disgrace through the brownjug as a poaching uncle of his through his ferrets and wires. 

When the moon rose full and lit up the Overboro'-road as bright asday, and the children came out from the cottages to their play, Cicely, though she did not join, used to watch their romping dancesand picked up the old rhymes they chanted. When the full moon shone inat her bedroom window, Cicely was very careful to turn away or coverher face; for she had heard one of the mowers declare that aftersleeping on the hay in the moonlight one night he woke up in themorning almost blind. Besides the meadows around Lucketts' Place, shesometimes wandered further to the edge of Hilary's great open arablefields, where the green corn, before it came out in ear, seemed toflutter, flutter like innumerable tiny flags, as the wind rushed overit. 

She learned to rub the ripe ears in her hands to work the grain out ofthe husk, and then to winnow away the chaff by letting the corn slowlydrop in a stream from one palm to the other, blowing gently with hermouth the while. The grain remained on account of its weight, thechaff floating away, and the wheat, still soft though fully formed, could thus be pleasantly tasted. The plaintive notes of theyellowhammer fell from the scanty trees of the wheat-field hedge, and the ploughboy who was put there to frighten away the rooks toldher the bird said, repeating the song over and over again, 'A littlebit of bread and _no_ cheese. ' And indeed these syllables, with alengthening emphasis on the 'no, ' come ludicrously near to representthe notes. The ploughboy understood them very well, for to have only ahunch of bread and little or no cheese was often his own case. 

Two meadows distant from the lower woods of the Chace there is whatseems from afar a remarkably wide hedge irregularly bordered withfurze. But on entering a gateway in it you find a bridge over a brook, which for some distance flows with a hedge on either side. The lowparapet of the bridge affords a seat--one of Cicely's favouritehaunts--whence in spring it is pleasant to look up the brook; for thebanks sloping down from the bushes to the water are yellow withprimroses, and hung over with willow boughs. As the brook is straight, the eye can see under these a long way up; and presently a kingfisher, bright with azure and ruddy hues, comes down the brook, flying butjust above the surface on which his reflection travels too. He perchesfor a moment on a branch close to the bridge, but the next sees thathe is not alone, and instantly retreats with a shrill cry. 

A moorhen ventures forth from under the arches, her favouritehiding-place, and feeds among the weeds by the shore, but at the leastmovement rushes back to shelter. A wood-pigeon comes over, flyingslowly; he was going to alight on the ash tree yonder, but suddenlyespying some one under the cover of the boughs increases his pace andrises higher. Two bright bold bullfinches pass; they have a nestsomewhere in the thick hawthorn. A jay, crossing from the firplantations, stays awhile in the hedge, and utters his loud harshscream like the tearing of linen. For a few hours the winds are stilland the sunshine broods warm over the mead. It is a delicious snatchof spring. 

Every now and then a rabbit emerges from the burrows which arescattered thickly along the banks, and, passing among the primroses, goes through the hedge into the border of furze, and thence into themeadow-grass. Some way down the brook they are so numerous as to havedestroyed the vegetation on the banks, excepting a few ferns, by theirconstant movements and scratching of the sand; so that there is asmall warren on either side of the water. It is said that theyoccasionally swim across the broad brook, which is much too wide tojump; but I have never seen such a thing but once. A rabbit alreadystung with shot and with a spaniel at his heels did once leap at thebrook here, and, falling short, swam the remainder without apparenttrouble, and escaped into a hole on the opposite shore with his wetfur laid close to the body. But they usually cross at the bridge, where the ground bears the marks of their incessant nightly travels toand fro. 

Passing now in the other direction, up the stream from the bridge, thehedges after a while cease, and the brook winds through the openfields. Here there is a pond, to which at night the heron resorts; forhe does not care to trust himself between the high hedgerows. In thestill shallow, but beyond reach, there floats on the surface a smallpatch of green vegetation formed of the treble leaves of the watercrow-foot. Towards June it will be a brilliant white spot. The slenderstems uphold the cup-like flowers two or three inches above thesurface, the petals of the purest white with a golden centre. They arethe silver buttercups of the brook. Where the current flows slowly thelong and somewhat spear-shaped leaves of the water-plantain stand up, and in the summer will be surmounted by a tall stalk with three smallpale pink petals on its branches. The leaf can be written on with apencil, the point tracing letters by removing the green colouringwhere it passes. 

Far larger are the leaves of the water-docks; they sometimes attain toimmense size. By the bank the 'wild willow, ' or water-betony, with itswoody stem, willow-shaped leaves, and pale red flowers, grows thickly. Across where there is a mud-bank the stout stems of the willow herbare already tall. They quite cover the shoal, and line the brook likeshrubs. They are the strongest and the most prominent of all the brookplants. At the end of March or beginning of April the stalks appear afew inches high, and they gradually increase in size, until in Julythey reach above the waist, and form a thicket by the shore. Not tillJuly does the flower open, so that, though they make so much show offoliage, it is months before any colour brightens it. The red flowercomes at the end of a pod, and has a tiny white cross within it; it iswelcome, because by August so many of the earlier flowers are fading. The country folk call it the sod-apple, and say the leaves crushed inthe fingers have something of the scent of apple-pie. 

Farther up the stream, where a hawthorn bush shelters it, stands aknotted fig-wort with a square stem and many branches, each with smallvelvety flowers. If handled, the leaves emit a strong odour, like theleaves of the elder-bush; it is a coarse-growing plant, andoccasionally reaches to a height of between four and five feet, with astem more than half an inch square. Some ditches are full of it. Bythe rushes the long purple spike of the loose-strife rises, and on themud-banks among the willows there grows a tall plant with bunches offlower, the petals a bright yellow: this is the yellow loose-strife. Near it is a herb with a much-divided leaf, and curious flowers likesmall yellow buttons. Rub one of these gently, and it will give fortha most peculiar perfume--aromatic, and not to be compared withanything else; the tansy once scented will always be recognised. 

The large rough leaves of the wild comfrey grow in bunches here andthere; the leaves are attached to the stem for part of their length, and the stem is curiously flanged. The bells are often greenish, sometimes white, occasionally faintly lilac; they are partly hiddenunder the dark-green leaves. Where undisturbed the comfrey grows to agreat size, the stems becoming very thick. Green flags hide and almostchoke the shallow mouth of a streamlet that joins the brook comingfrom the woods. Though green above, the flag where it enters itssheath is white. 

Tracing it upwards, the brook becomes narrower and the stream less, though running more swiftly; and here there is a marshy spot withwillows, and between them some bulrushes and great bunches ofbullpolls. This coarse grass forms tufts or cushions, on which snakesoften coil in the sunshine. Yet though so rough, in June the bullpollsends up tall slender stalks with graceful feathery heads, reed-like, surrounded with long ribbons of grass. In the ditches hereabout, andbeside the brook itself, the meadow-sweet scents the air; thecountry-folk call it 'meadow-soot. ' And in those ditches are numerouscoarse stems and leaves which, if crushed in the fingers, yield astrong parsnip-like smell. The water-parsnip, which is poisonous, issaid to be sometimes gathered for watercress; but the palate must bedull, one would think, to eat it, and the smell is a sure test. Theblue flower of the brooklime is not seen here; you must look for itwhere the springs break forth, where its foliage sometimes quiteconceals the tiny rill. 

These flowers do not, of course, all appear together; but they may beall found in the summer season along the brook, and you should beginto look for them when the brown scum, that sign of coming warmth, rises from the bottom of the waters. Returning to the pond, it may benoticed that the cart-horses when they walk in of a summer's day pawthe stream, as if they enjoyed the cool sound of the splash; but thecows stand quite still with the water up to their knees. 

There is a spot by a yet more quiet bridge, where the littlewater-shrews play to and fro where the bank overhangs. As they diveand move under water the reddish-brown back looks of a lighter colour;when they touch the ground they thrust their tiny nostrils up justabove the surface. There are many holes of water-rats, but no onewould imagine how numerous these latter creatures are. One of Hilary'ssons, Hugh, kept some ferrets, and in the summer was put to it to findthem enough food. The bird-keepers brought in a bird occasionally, andthere were cruel rumours of a cat having disappeared. Still there wasnot sufficient till he hit on the idea of trapping the water-rats; andthis is how he did it. 

He took three small twigs and ran them into the bank of the brook atthe mouth of the water-rat's hole and just beneath the surface of thestream. These made a platform upon which the gin was placed--the pan, and indeed all the trap, just under the water, which prevented anyscent. Whether the rat came out of his hole and plunged to dive orstarted to swim, or whether he came swimming noiselessly round thebend and was about to enter the burrow, it made no difference; he wascertain to pass over and throw the gin. The instant the teeth struckhim he gave a jump which lifted the trap off the twig platform, and itimmediately sank in the deep water and soon drowned him; for thewater-rat, though continually diving, can only stay a short time underwater. It proved a fatal contrivance, chiefly, as was supposed, because the gin, being just under the water, could not be smelt. Nofewer than eleven rats were thus captured in succession at the mouthof one hole. Altogether 150 were taken in the course of that summer. 

Hugh kept a record of them by drawing a stroke with chalk for everyrat on the red brick wall of the stable, near his ferret-hutch. Heonly used a few traps--one was set not at a hole, but at a sharp curveof the brook--and the whole of these rats were taken in a part of thebrook about 250 or 300 yards in length, just where it ran through asingle field. The great majority were water-rats, but there werefifteen or twenty house-rats among them: these were very thin thoughlarge, and seemed to be caught as they were migrating; for sometimesseveral were trapped the same day, and then none (of this kind) for aweek or more. Three moorhens were also caught; a fourth was only heldby its claw in the gin; this one, not being in the least injured, helet go again. 

It had been observed previously that the water-rats, either in makingtheir burrows or for food, gnawed off the young withy-stolesunderneath the ground in the withy-beds, and thus killed aconsiderable amount of withy; but after all this slaughter thewithy-beds recovered and bore the finest crop they ever grew. But whocould have imagined in walking by the brook that only in its coursethrough a single meadow it harboured 150 rats? Probably, though, someof them came up or down the stream. The ferrets fared sumptuously allthe summer. 

CHAPTER III. 

A PACK OF STOATS. BIRDS. 

The sweet scent from a beanfield beside the road caused me to lingerone summer morning in a gateway under the elms. A gentle south windcame over the beans, bearing with it the odour of their black-and-whitebloom. The Overboro' road ran through part of the Okebourne property(which was far too extensive to be enclosed in a ring fence), and thetimber had therefore been allowed to grow so that there was anirregular avenue of trees for some distance. I faced the beanfield, which was on the opposite side, leaning back against the gate whichled into some of Hilary's wheat. The silence of the highway, the softwind, the alternate sunshine and shade as the light clouds passedover, induced a dreamy feeling; and I cannot say how long I had beenthere when something seemed as it were to cross the corners of myhalf-closed eyes. 

Looking up I saw three stoats gallop across the road, not more thanten yards away. They issued from under the footpath, which was raisedand had a drain through it to relieve the road of flood-water instorm. The drain was faced with a flat stone, with a small round holecut in it. Coming from the wheat at my back, the stoats went down intothe ditch; thence entered the short tunnel under the footpath, and outat its stone portal, over the road to the broad sward on the oppositeside; then along a furrow in the turf to the other hedge, and so intothe beanfield. They galloped like racehorses straining for thevictory; the first leading, the second but a neck behind, and thethird not half a length. The smooth road rising slightly in the centreshowed them well; and thus, with the neck stretched out in front andthe tail extended in the rear, the stoat appears much longer than on amound or in the grass. 

A second or so afterwards two more started from the same spot; but Iwas perhaps in the act to move, for before they had gone three yardsthey saw me and rushed back to the drain. After a few minutes thelarger of these two, probably the male, ventured forth again andreached the middle of the road, when he discovered that his moretimorous companion had not followed but was only just peeping out. Hestopped and elevated his neck some five or six inches, planting thefore-feet so as to lift him up high to see round, while hishindquarters were flush with the road, quite flat in the dust in whichhis tail was trailing. His reddish body and white neck, the clear-cuthead, the sharp ears, and dark eye were perfectly displayed in thaterect attitude. As his companion still hesitated he cried twice, as ifimpatiently, 'check, check'--a sound like placing the tongue againstthe teeth and drawing it away. But she feared to follow, and hereturned to her. Thinking they would attempt to cross again presently, I waited quietly. 

A lark came over from the wheat, and, alighting, dusted herself in theroad, hardly five yards from the mouth of the drain, and was theresome minutes. A robin went still closer--almost opposite the hole;both birds apparently quite unconscious of the bloodthirsty creaturesconcealed within it. Some time passed, but the two stoats did not comeout, and I saw no more of them: they probably retreated to the wheatas I left the gateway, and would remain there till the noise and jarof my footsteps had ceased in the distance. Examining the road, therewas a trail where the first three had crossed in quick succession. Inthe thick white dust their swift feet had left a line drawn roughlyyet lightly, the paws leaving not an exact but an elongated, ill-defined impression. But where the fourth stopped, elevated hisneck, and cried to his mate, there was a perfect print of thefore-feet side by side. So slight a track would be obliterated by thefirst cart that came by. 

Till that day I had never seen so many as five stoats together huntingin a pack. It would seem as if stoats and weasels had regular routes;for I now recollected that in the previous winter, when the snow wason the ground, I surprised two weasels almost exactly in the samespot. At other times, too, I have seen solitary stoats and weasels(which may have had companions in the hedge) hunting along that mound, both before and since. I was at first going to tell Hilary about thepack, but afterwards refrained, as he would at once proceed to set upgins in the run, while I thought I should like to see the animalsagain. But I got him to talk about stoats and weasels, and found thathe had not himself seen so many together. There was, however, a manabout the place who told a tale of some weasels he had seen. It was'that rascal old Aaron;' but he could not listen to such a fellow. Hilary would tell me nothing further, having evidently a strongdislike to the man. 

It seems there were two Aarons--uncle and nephew: old Aaron was thearch-poacher of the parish, young Aaron worked regularly at Lucketts'Place. This young labourer (the man who fell asleep on themilking-stool) was one of the best of his class--a great, powerfulfellow, but good-natured, willing, and pleasant to speak to. He was afavourite with many, and with reason, for he had a gentleness ofmanner beyond his station; and, till you knew his weakness, you couldnot but take an interest in him. His vice was drink. He was alwaysdown at Lucketts' Place; and through him I made acquaintance with hisdisreputable uncle, who was at first rather shy of me, for he had seenme about with Hilary, and between the two there was a mortal feud. OldAaron could not keep out of Okebourne Chace, and Hilary was 'down'upon him. Hilary was, indeed, keener than the keepers. 

The old poacher saw the weasels in the 'Pitching. ' This was a privatelane, which ran through the recesses of the Chace where the wood wasthickest and most secluded. It had been made for the convenience ofcommunication between the upper and lower farms, and for haulingtimber; the gates at each end being kept locked. In one place the lanedescended the steepest part of the wooded hill, and in frosty weatherit was not easy even to walk down it there. Sarsen stones, gatheredout of the way of the plough in the arable fields, had been throwndown in it at various times with the object of making a firm bottom. Rounded and smooth and very hard, these stones, irregularly placed, with gaps and intervals, when slippery with hoar frost were mostdifficult to walk on. Once or twice men out hunting had been known togallop down this hill: the extreme of headlong bravado; for if therewas any frost it was sure to linger in that shady lane, and a slip ofthe iron-shod hoof could scarcely fail to result in a broken neck. Itwas like riding down a long steep flight of steps. 

Aaron one day was engaged with his ferret and nets in the Pitching, just at the bottom of the hill, where there grew a quantity ofbrake-fern as tall as the shoulder. It was shrivelled and yellow, butthick enough to give him very good cover. Every now and then he lookedout into the lane to see if any one was about, and on one of theseoccasions saw what he imagined at first to be a colony of ratsmigrating; but when they came near, racing down the lane, he foundthey were weasels. He counted fourteen, and thought there were one ortwo more. 

Aaron also told me a curious incident that happened to him very earlyone morning towards the beginning of spring. The snow was on theground and the moon was shining brightly as he got on the railway (afew miles from Okebourne) and walked some distance up it: he did notsay what for, but probably as the nearest way to a cover. As heentered a deep cutting where the line came round a sharp curve henoticed strange spots upon the snow, and upon examination found it wasblood. For the moment he thought there had been an accident; butshortly afterwards he picked up a hare's pad severed from the leg, andnext a hare's head, and presently came on a quantity of similarfragments, all fresh. He collected them, and found they had belongedto six hares which had been cut to pieces by a passing train. Theanimals were so mutilated as not to be of the least use. 

When I told Hilary of this, he at once pronounced it impossible, andnothing but one of Aaron's lies. On reflection, however, I am not sosure that it is impossible, nor can I see any reason why the oldpoacher should invent a falsehood of the kind. It was just a time ofthe year when hares are beginning to go 'mad, ' and, as they were notfeeding but playing together, they might have strayed up the line justas they do along roads. Most persons must have observed how quietly atrain sometimes steals up--so quietly as to be inaudible: a fact thathas undoubtedly been the death of many unfortunates. Now, just at thisspot there was a sharp curve, and if the driver shut off steam as heran round it the train very likely came up without a sound. The sidesof the cutting being very steep, the hares, when at last theyperceived their danger, would naturally rush straight away along themetals. Coming at great speed, the engine would overtake and destroythem: a miserable end for the poor creatures in the midst of theirmoonlight frolic. But what Aaron laid stress on was the fact that hecould not even sell the skins, they were so cut to pieces. 

The rooks' nests in the Chace were very numerous, and were chieflybuilt in elm trees, but some in tall spruce firs. It was easy to knowwhen the birds had paired, as a couple of rooks could then be oftenseen perched gravely side by side upon an old nest in the midst ofleafless boughs, deliberating about its repair. There were somepoplars near a part of the rookery, and when the nests were fullyoccupied with young the old birds frequently alighted on the very topof an adjacent poplar. The slender brush-like tip of the tree bentwith their weight, curving over like a whip, to spring up when theyleft. 

The rooks were fond of maize, boldly descending among the poultry keptin a rickyard within a short distance of their trees. If any one has aclump of trees in which rooks seem inclined to build and it is desiredto encourage them, it would appear a good plan to establish apoultry-yard in the same field. They are certain to visit the spot. 

One day I watched a rook pursuing a swift and making every effort toovertake and strike it. The rook displayed great power of wing, twisting and turning, now descending or turning on one side to glidemore rapidly, and uttering short 'caws' of eagerness or anger; but, just eluding the heavy rush of its pursuer, the swift doubled anddarted away before it, as if tempting the enemy to charge, and thenenjoying his disappointment. Several other swifts wheeled above at adistance, apparently watching. These evolutions lasted some minutes, rook and swift rising higher and higher into the air until, tired ofbeing chased, the swift went straight away at full speed, easilyoutstripping the rook, which soon desisted from the attempt to follow. 

When birds are thus combating, the chief aim of each is to get abovethe other, as any elevation gives an advantage. This may becontinually noticed in spring, when fighting is always going on, andis as characteristic of the small birds as the larger. At first Ithought it was a crow after the swift, but came to the conclusion thatit must be a rook because the battle began over the rookery andafterwards the aggressor sailed away to where some rooks were feeding. Nor would a crow have exhibited such agility of wing. Swallows oftenbuffet a crow; but this was a clear case of a rook attacking. 

In the country rooks never perch on houses, and but seldom on sheds, unless fresh thatched, when they come to examine the straw, as also onthe ricks. But in Brighton, which is a treeless locality, a rook maysometimes be seen on a chimney-pot in the midst of the town, and thepinnacles of the Pavilion are a favourite resort; a whole flock ofrooks and jackdaws often wheel about the domes of that building. Atthe Chace a rook occasionally mounted on a molehill recently thrown upand scattered the earth right and left with his bill--striking now toone side and now to the other. Hilary admitted that rooks destroyedvast quantities of grubs and creeping things, but was equally positivethat they feasted on grain; and indeed it could not be denied that acrop of wheat almost ripe is a very favourite resort of a flock. Hehad seen rooks carry away ears of wheat detached from the stalk to anopen spot for better convenience. They would follow the dibblingmachine, taking each grain of seed-wheat in succession, guided to theexact spot by the slight depression made by the dibble. 

Every evening all the rooks of the neighbourhood gathered into vastflocks and returned to roost in the woods of the Chace. But one winterafternoon there came on the most dense fog that had been known for alength of time, and a flock of rooks on their way as usual to theChace stopped all night in a clump of trees on the farm a mile fromthe roosting-place. This the oldest labourer had never known them dobefore. In the winter just past (1879-80) there were several verythick fogs during sharp frost. One afternoon I noticed a small flockof starlings which seemed unable to find their way home to the copsewhere I knew vast numbers of them roosted. This flock as it grew dusksettled in an elm by the roadside, then removed to another, shakingdown the rime from the branches, and a third time wheeled round andperched in an oak. At that hour on ordinary days the starlings wouldall have been flying fast in a straight line for the copse, but thesewere evidently in doubt and did not know which direction to take. 

Hilary disliked to see the wood-pigeons in his wheat-fields: thewood-pigeon beats the grains out of a wheat-ear with the bill, striking it while on the ground. The sparrows, again, clear thestanding wheat-ears, which at a little distance look thin anddisarranged, and when handled are empty. 

There were many missel-thrushes about the Chace; they are fond of awooded district. They pack together in summer and part in winter--justopposite in that respect to so many other birds, which separate inwarm weather and congregate as it grows cold, so that the lower thetemperature the larger the flock. In winter and spring themissel-thrushes fly alone or not more than two together. After theiryoung have left the nest they go in small packs. I saw ten or twelverise from an arable field on the 18th of June last year; there do notoften seem to be more than a dozen together. I have counted ten in apack on the 16th of September, and seven together as late as the 2ndof October. Soon after that they appear to separate and act on theirindividual wishes. Starlings in like manner pack after their young canfly, but then they do not separate in autumn. 

It may be remarked that by autumn the young missel-thrushes would notonly fly well, but would have been educated by the old birds, andwould have come to maturity. Their natural independence might thencome into play. But these are effects rather than causes, besideswhich I think birds and animals often act from custom rather than foradvantage. Among men customs survive for centuries after the originalmeaning has been lost. I had always been told by country people thatthe missel-thrush was a solitary bird, and when I first observed apack and mentioned it some incredulity was expressed. Very naturallyin summer people do not see much but hay and wheat. It was noticed onthe farms about the Chace in the springs of 1878 and 1879 that thecorncrakes, which had formerly been so numerous and proclaimed theirpresence so loudly, were scarcely heard at all. 

It is a little outside my subject, since it did not occur in theChace, but the other day a friend was telling me how he had beenhunted by bucks while riding a bicycle. He was passing through aforest in the summer, when he suddenly became aware of six or sevenbucks coming down a glade after him. The track being rough he couldnot ride at full speed--probably they would have outstripped him evenif he had been able to do so--and they were overtaking him rapidly. Asthey came up he saw that they meant mischief, and fearing a bad fallhe alighted by a tree, behind which he thought to dodge them. But nosooner did he touch the ground than the bucks so furiously rushingafter him stopped dead in their career; he stepped towards them, anddirectly they saw him walking they retreated hastily to a distance. 

The first berries to go as the autumn approaches are those of themountain-ash. Both blackbirds and thrushes began to devour thepale-red bunches hanging on the mountain-ashes as early as the 4th ofSeptember last year. Starlings are fond of elder-berries: a flockalighting on a bush black with ripe berries will clear the bunches ina very short time. Haws, or peggles, which often quite cover thehawthorn bushes, are not so general a food as the fruit of the briar. Hips are preferred; at least, the fruit of the briar is the first ofthe two to disappear. The hip is pecked open (by thrushes, redwings, and blackbirds) at the tip, the seeds extracted, and the part where itis attached to the stalk left, just as if the contents had been suckedout. Greenfinches, too, will eat hips. 

Haws are often left even after severe frosts; sometimes they seem toshrivel or blacken, and may not perhaps be palatable then. Missel-thrushes and wood-pigeons eat them. Last winter in the stressof the sharp and continued frosts the greenfinches were driven inDecember to swallow the shrivelled blackberries still on the brambles. The fruity part of the berries was of course gone, and nothingremained but the seeds or pips, dry and hard as wood; they werereduced to feeding on this wretched food. Perhaps the last of theseeds available are those of the docks. 

This is well known to bird-fowlers, and on a dry day in January theytake two large bunches of docks--'red docks' they call them--tiedround the centre like faggots and well smeared at the top withbirdlime. These are placed on the ground, by a hedge, and near them adecoy goldfinch in a cage. Goldfinches eat dock-seed, and if anyapproach the decoy-bird calls. The wild bird descends from the hedgeto feed on the dock-seed and is caught. Goldfinches go in pairs allthe winter and work along the hedges together. In spring the younggreen buds upon the hawthorn are called 'cuckoo's bread and cheese' bythe ploughboys. 

CHAPTER IV. 

HAMLET FOLK. 

It happened one Sunday morning in June that a swarm of bees issuedfrom a hive in a cottage garden near Okebourne church. The queen atfirst took up her position in an elm tree just outside the churchyard, where a large cluster of bees quickly depended from a bough. Being ata great height the cottager could not take them, and, anxious not tolose the swarm, he resorted to the ancient expedient of rattlingfire-tongs and shovel together in order to attract them by theclatter. The discordant banging of the fire-irons resounded in thechurch, the doors being open to admit the summer air; and the noisebecame so uproarious that the clerk presently, at a sign from therector, went out to stop it, for the congregation were in a grin. Hedid stop it, the cottager desisting with much reluctance; but, as ifto revenge the bee-master's wrongs, in the course of the day theswarm, quitting the elm, entered the church and occupied a post in theroof. 

After a while it was found that the swarm had finally settled there, and were proceeding to build combs and lay in a store of honey. Thebees, indeed, became such a terror to nervous people, buzzing withoutceremony over their heads as they stood up to sing, and caused such acommotion and buffeting with Prayer-books and fans and handkerchiefs, that ultimately the congregation were compelled to abandon their pews. All efforts to dislodge the bees proving for the time ineffectual, therector had a temporary reading-desk erected in the porch, and thereheld the service, the congregation sitting on chairs and forms in theyard, and some on the stone tombs, and even on the sward under theshade of the yew tree. 

In the warm dry hay-making weather this open-air worship was verypleasant, the flowers in the grass and the roses in the little plotsabout the tombs giving colour and sweet odours, while the swallowsglided gracefully overhead and sometimes a blackbird whistled. Thebees, moreover, interfered with the baptisms, and even caused severalmarriages to be postponed. Inside the porch was a recess where thewomen left their pattens in winter, instead of clattering iron-shoddown the aisle. 

Okebourne village was built in an irregular way on both sides of asteep coombe, just at the verge of the hills, and about a mile fromthe Chace; indeed, the outlying cottages bordered the park wall. Themost melancholy object in the place was the ruins of a windmill; thesails and arms had long disappeared, but the wooden walls, black androtting, remained. The windmill had its genius, its humanrepresentative--a mere wreck, like itself, of olden times. There neverwas a face so battered by wind and weather as that of old Peter, theowner of the ruin. His eyes were so light a grey as to appear all butcolourless. He wore a smock-frock the hue of dirt itself, and hishands were ever in his pockets as he walked through rain and snowbeside his cart, hauling flints from the pits upon the Downs. 

If the history of the cottage-folk is inquired into it will often befound that they have descended from well-to-do positions in life--notfrom extravagance or crime, or any remarkable piece of folly, butsimply from a long-continued process of muddling away money. When thewindmill was new, Peter's forefathers had been, for village peoplewell off. The family had never done anything to bring themselves intodisgrace; they had never speculated; but their money had beengradually muddled away, leaving the last little better than alabourer. To see him crawling along the road by his load of flints, stooping forward, hands in pocket, and then to glance at the distantwindmill, likewise broken down, the roof open, and the rain and windsrushing through it, was a pitiful spectacle. For that old buildingrepresented the loss of hope and contentment in life as much as anyonce lordly castle whose battlements are now visited only by thejackdaw. The family had, as it were, foundered and gone down. 

How they got the stray cattle into the pound it is difficult toimagine; for the gate was very narrow, and neither bullocks nor horseslike being driven into a box. The copings of the wall on one side hadbeen pushed over, and lay in a thick growth of nettles: this, almostthe last of old village institutions, was, too, going by degrees todestruction. 

Every hamlet used to have its representative fighting-man--often morethan one--who visited the neighbouring villages on the feast days, when there was a good deal of liquor flowing, to vaunt of theirprowess before the local champions. These quickly gathered, and afterdue interchange of speeches not unlike the heroes of Homer, whoharangue each other ere they hurl the spear, engaged in conflict dire. There was a regular feud for many years between the Okebourne men andthe Clipstone 'chaps;' and never did the stalwart labourers of thosetwo villages meet without falling to fisticuffs with right goodwill. Nor did they like each other at all the worse, and after the battledrank deeply from the same quart cups. Had these encounters found anhistorian to put them upon record, they would have read something likethe wars (without the bloodshed) between the little Greek cities, whose population scarcely exceeded that of a village, and betweenwhich and our old villages there exists a certain similarity. Asimplicity of sentiment, an unconsciousness as it were of themselves, strong local attachments and hatreds, these they had in common, andthe Okebourne and Clipstone men thwacked and banged each other's broadchests in true antique style. 

Hilary said that when he was a boy almost all the cottages in theplace had a man or woman living in them who had attained to extremeold age. He reckoned up cottage after cottage to me in which he hadknown old folk up to and over eighty years of age. Of late the oldpeople seemed to have somehow died out: there were not nearly so manynow. 

Okebourne Wick, a little hamlet of fifteen or twenty scattered houses, was not more than half a mile from Lucketts' Place; on the Overboro'road, which passed it, was a pleasant roadside inn, where, under thesign of The Sun, very good ale was sold. Most of the farmers droppedin there now and then, not so much for a glass as a gossip, and no onefrom the neighbouring villages or from Overboro' town ever drove pastwithout stopping. In the 'tap' of an evening you might see thelabourers playing at 'chuck-board, ' which consists in casting a smallsquare piece of lead on to certain marked divisions of a shallowtray-like box placed on the trestle-table. The lead, being heavy, would stay where it fell; the rules I do not know, but the scenereminded me of the tric-trac contests depicted by the old Dutchpainters. 

Young Aaron was very clever at it. He pottered round the inn of anevening and Saturday afternoons, doing odd jobs in the cellar with thebarrels; for your true toping spirit loves to knock the hoops and towork about the cask, and carry the jugs in answer to the cry for somemore 'tangle-legs'--for thus they called the strong beer. Sometimes alabourer would toast his cheese on a fork in the flame of the candle. In the old days, before folk got so choice of food and delicate ofpalate, there really seemed no limit to the strange things they ate. Before the railways were made, herds of cattle had of course to travelthe roads, and often came great distances. The drovers were at thesame time the hardiest and the roughest of men in that rough and hardytime. As night came on, after seeing their herd safe in a field, theynaturally ate their supper at the adjacent inn. Then sometimes, as adainty treat with which to finish his meal, a drover would call for abiscuit, large and hard, as broad as his hand, and, taking the tallowcandle, proceed to drip the grease on it till it was well larded andsoaked with the melted fat. 

At that date, before the Government stamp had been removed fromnewspapers, the roadside inn was the centre and focus of allintelligence. When the first railway was constructed up in the Norththe Okebourne folk, like the rest of the world, were with good reasonextremely curious about this wonderful invention, and questioned everypasser-by eagerly for information. But no one could describe it, tillat last a man, born in the village, but who had been away for someyears soldiering, returned to his native place. He had been serving inCanada and came through Liverpool, and thus saw the marvel of the age. At the Sun the folk in the evening crowded round him, and insistedupon knowing what a steam-engine was like. He did his best to describeit, but in vain; they wanted a familiar illustration, and could not besatisfied till the soldier, by a happy inspiration, said the onlything to which he could compare a locomotive was a great cannon on atimber-carriage. To us who are so accustomed to railways it seems asingular idea; but, upon reflection, it was not so inapt, consideringthat the audience had seen or heard something of cannons, and werewell acquainted with timber-carriages. The soldier wished to conveythe notion of a barrel or boiler mounted on wheels. 

They kept up the institution of the parish constable, as separate anddistinct from the policeman, till very recently at Okebourne, thoughit seems to have lapsed long since in many country places. One yearHilary, with much shrugging of shoulders, was forced into the office;and during his term there was a terrible set-to between two tribes ofgipsies in the Overboro' road. They fought like tigers, making thelovely summer day hideous with their cries and shrieks--the women, thefiercer by far, tearing each other's hair. One fiendish creature drewher scissors, and, using them like a stiletto, drove the sharp pointinto a sister 'gip's' head. 

'Where's the constable?' was the cry. Messengers rushed to Lucketts'Place; the barn, the sheds, the hayfield, all were searched invain--Hilary had quite disappeared. At the very first sound he hadslipped away to look at some cattle in Chequer's Piece, the very lastand outlying field of the farms, full a mile away, and when themessengers got to Chequer's Piece of course he was up on the Down. Somuch for the parish constable's office--an office the farmers shirkedwhenever they could, and would not put in force when compelled toaccept it. 

How could a resident willingly go into a neighbour's cottage andarrest him without malice and scandal being engendered? If he did hisduty he was abused; if he did not do it, it was hinted that hefavoured the offender. As for the 'gip' who was stabbed, nothing morewas heard of it; she 'traipsed' off with the rest. 

Sometimes when the 'tangle-legs' got up into their heads the labourersfelt an inclination to resume the ancient practices of theirfore-fathers. Then you might see a couple facing each other in thedoorway, each with his mug in one hand, and the other clenched, flourishing their knuckles. 'Thee hit I. ' 'Thee come out in th' roadand I'll let thee knaw. ' The one knew very well that the other darednot strike him in the house, and the other felt certain that, howeverentreated, nothing would induce his opponent to accept the invitationand 'come out into th' road. '

The shadows of the elm have so far to fall that they become enlargedand lose the edge upon reaching the ground. I noticed this onemoonlight night in early June while sitting on a stile where thefootpath opened on the Overboro' road. Presently I heard voices, andimmediately afterwards a group came round the curve of the highway. There were three cottage women, each with a basket and severalpackages; having doubtless been into Overboro' town shopping, for itwas Saturday. They walked together in a row; and in front of them, about five yards ahead, came a burly labourer of the same party, carrying in his arms a large clock. 

He had taken too much ale, and staggered as he walked, two steps asideto one forward, and indeed could hardly keep upright. His efforts tosave himself and the clock from destruction led to some singularflexures of the body, and his feet traced a maze as he advanced, hugging the clock to his chest. The task was too much for hisover-taxed patience: just opposite the stile he stood still, held hisload high over his head, and shouting, 'Dang th' clock!' hurled itwith all his force thirty feet against the mound, at the same timedropping a-sprawl. The women, without the least excitement orsurprise, quietly endeavoured to assist him up; and, as he resisted, one of them remarked in the driest matter-of-fact tone, 'Ourn be justlike un--as contrary as the wind. ' She alluded to her own husband. 

When I mentioned this incident afterwards to Mrs. Luckett, she saidthe troubles the cottage women underwent on account of the 'beer' werepast belief. One woman who did some work at the farmhouse kept hercottage entirely by her own exertions; her husband doing nothing butdrink. He took her money from her by force, nor could she hide itanywhere but what he would hunt it out. At last in despair she droppedthe silver in the jug on the wash-hand basin, and had the satisfactionof seeing him turn everything topsy-turvy in a vain attempt to findit. As he never washed, it never occurred to him to look in thewater-jug. 

The cottage women when they went into Overboro' shopping, she said, were the despair of the drapers. A woman, with two or three more tochorus her sentiments, would go into a shop and examine half-a-dozendress fabrics, rubbing each between her work-hardened fingers andthumb till the shopkeeper winced, expecting to see it torn. Aftertrying several and getting the counter covered she would push themaside, contemptuously remarking, 'I don't like this yer shallygallee(flimsy) stuff. Haven't'ee got any gingham tackle?' Whereat the poordraper would cast down a fresh roll of stoutest material with thereply: 'Here, ma'am. Here's something that will wear like pin-wire. 'This did better, but was declared to be 'gallus dear. '

Even within recent years, now and then a servant-girl upon enteringservice at the farmhouse would refuse to touch butcher's meat. She hadnever tasted anything but bacon at home, and could only be persuadedto eat fresh meat with difficulty, being afraid she should not likeit. One girl who came from a lonely cottage in a distant'coombe-bottom' of the Downs was observed never to write home orattempt to communicate with her parents. She said it was of no use; nopostman came near, and the letters they wrote or the letters writtento them never reached their destination. 'Coombe-bottom' is a curiousduplication--either word being used to indicate a narrow valley orhollow. An unfortunate child who lived there had never been so wellsince the stone roller went over his head. She had a lover, but he was'a gurt hummocksing noon-naw, ' so she was not sorry to leave him. Thephrase might be translated, 'great loose-jointed idiot. '

They sometimes had lettuce-pudding for dinner, and thought nothing ofeating raw bacon. In the snow the men wound hay-bands round their legsto serve as gaiters, and found it answered admirably. One poor girlhad been subject to fits ever since a stupid fellow, during thehaymaking, jokingly picked up a snake and threw it round her neck. Yeteven in that far-away coombe-bottom they knew enough to put anoyster-shell in the kettle to prevent incrustation. 

The rules of pronunciation understood about Okebourne seemed toconsist in lengthening the syllables that are usually spoken quick, and shortening those that are usually long. Hilary said that years agoit really appeared as if there was something deficient in the organsof the throat among the labourers, for there were words theypositively could not pronounce. The word 'reservoir, ' for instance, was always 'tezzievoy;' they could not speak the word correctly. Hecould not explain to me a very common expression among the men whenthey wished to describe anything unusual or strange for which they hadno exact equivalent. It was always 'a sort of a meejick. ' By degrees, however, we traced it back to 'menagerie. ' The travelling shows ofwild beasts at first so much astonished the villagers that everythingodd and curious became a menagerie, afterwards corrupted to 'meejick. '

'Caddle no man's cattle' was a favourite proverb with a population whowere never in a hurry. 'Like shot out of a show'l, ' to express extremenimbleness, was another. A comfortless, bare apartment was 'gabern;'anything stirred with a pointed instrument was 'ucked'--whether a cow'ucked' the fogger with her horn or the stable was cleaned out withthe fork. The verb 'to uck' was capable indeed of infiniteconjugation, and young Aaron, breaking off a bennet, once asked me tokindly 'uck' a grain of hay-dust out of his eye with it. When a heronrose out of the brook 'a moll ern flod away. '

With all their apparent simplicity some of the cottage folk were quiteup to the value of appearances. Old Aaron had a little shop; he andhis wife sold small packets of tea, tobacco, whipcord, and so forth. Sometimes while his wife was weighing out the sugar, oldAaron--wretched old deceiver--would come in rustling a crumpled pieceof paper as if it were a banknote, and handing it to her with muchimpressiveness of manner whisper loudly, 'Now you take un and put unaway; and mind you don't mix um. You put he along with the fives andnot with the tens. '

Hilary once showed me the heel of a boot which had just been mended bythe hedge carpenter and cobbler who worked for him; and offered to betthat not all the scientific people in Europe, with microscope, spectrum analysis, all their appliances, could tell what leather thenew heel-piece was made of. Unable to guess, I gave it up; it was ofbacon. A pig that was never a 'good doer' was found in a ditch dead. There is always a competition among the labourers for a dead pig orsheep; it was the cobbler's turn, and he had it, cut it up, and saltedit down. But when in course of time he came to partake of his side ofbacon, behold it was so tough and dried up that even he could not gnawit. The side hung in the cottage for months, for he did not like tothrow it away, and could not think what to do with it, for the dogscould not eat it. At last the old fellow hit upon the notion of usingit as leather to mend shoes; so half his customers walked about theworld on bacon heels. 

So far as I could discover, the cottage folk did not now use manyherbs. They made tea sometimes of the tormentil, whose little yellowflowers appear along the furrows. The leaves of the square-stemmedfigwort, which they called 'cresset' or 'cressil, ' were occasionallyplaced on a sore; and the yarrow--locally 'yarra'--was yet held inestimation as a salve or ointment. 

It would be possible for any one to dwell a long time in the midst ofa village, and yet never hear anything of this kind and obtain no ideawhatever of the curious mixture of the grotesque, the ignorance andyet cleverness, which go to make up hamlet life. But so many labourersand labouring women were continually in and out of the kitchen atLucketts' Place that I had an opportunity of gathering these itemsfrom Mrs. Luckett and Cicely. Years since they had employed even morelabour, before machinery came into use so much: then as many astwenty-four women might have been counted in one hayfield, all inregular rank like soldiers, turning the hay 'wallows' with theirrakes. 'There's one thing now you have forgotten, ' said Cicely. 'Theypick the canker-roses off the briars and carry them in the pocket as acertain preventive of rheumatism. '

CHAPTER V. 

WIND-ANEMONES. THE FISHPOND. 

The only spot about the Chace where the wind-anemones grew was in asmall detached copse of ash-poles nearly a mile from the great woods. Between the stoles, which were rather far apart, the ground was quitecovered in spring with dark-green vegetation, so that it wasimpossible to walk there without treading down the leaves ofbluebells, anemones, and similar woodland plants. But if you wished tosee the anemones in their full beauty it was necessary to visit thecopse frequently; for if you forgot it, or delayed a fortnight, verylikely upon returning you would find that their fleeting lovelinesswas over. Their slender red stems rise but a few inches, and aresurrounded with three leaves; the six white petals of the cup-shapedflower droop a little and have a golden centre. Under the petal is atinge of purple, which is sometimes faintly visible through it. Theleaves are not only three in number, but are each cut deeply thrice;they are hardy, but the flower extremely delicate. 

On the banks dividing the copse from the meadows around it the bluedog-violets, which have no perfume, often opened so large and wide asto resemble pansies. They do not appear like this till just as theirflowering time is almost over. The meadows by the copse were small, not more than two or three acres each. One which was marshy was whitefor weeks together with the lady's-smock or cuckoo-flower. The petalsof these flowers are silvery white in some places, in others tintedwith lilac. The hues of wild flowers vary with their situation: inshady woodlands the toadflax or butter-and-eggs is often pale--asulphur colour; upon the Downs it is a deep and beautiful yellow. In aditch, of this marshy meadow was a great bunch of woodruff, abovewhose green whorls the white flowers were lifted. Over them thebrambles arched, their leaves growing in fives, and each leaf prickly. The bramble-shoots, as they touch the ground, take root and riseagain, and thus would soon cross a field were they not cut down. 

Pheasants were fond of visiting this copse, following the hedgerows toit from the Chace, and they always had one or more nests in it. Agreen woodpecker took it in his route, though he did not stay long, there not being many trees. These birds seem to have their regularrounds; there are some copses where they are scarcely ever heard. Theyprefer old trees; where there is much large and decaying timber, therethe woodpeckers come. Such little meadows as these about the copse arethe favourite resort of birds and the very home of flowers--more sothan extensive woods like the Chace, or the open pastures and arablefields. Thick hedgerows attract birds, and behind such cover theirmotions may be watched. There is, too, more variety of bush and tree. 

In one such hedgerow leading from the copse the maple-bushes in springwere hung with the green flowers which, though they depend in theirseason from so many trees, as the oak, are perhaps rarely observed. The elder-bushes in full white bloom scented the air for yards aroundboth by night and day; the white bloom shows on the darkest evening. Besides several crab-stoles--the buds of the crab might be mistakenfor thorns growing pointed at the extreme end of the twigs--there wasa large crab tree, which bore a plentiful crop. The lads sharpen theirknives by drawing the blade slowly to and fro through a crab-apple;the acid of the fruit eats the steel like aquafortis. They hide storesof these crabs in holes in the hayricks, supposing them to improve bykeeping. There, too, they conceal quantities of the apples from theold orchards, for the fruit in them is often almost as hard and notmuch superior in flavour to the crab. These apples certainly becomemore mellow after several months in the warm hay. 

A wild 'plum, ' or bullace, grew in one place; the plum about twice thesize of a sloe, with a bloom upon the skin like the cultivated fruit, but lacking its sweetness. Yet there was a distinct difference oftaste: the 'plum' had not got the extreme harshness of the sloe. Aquantity of dogwood occupied a corner; in summer it bore a pleasingflower; in the autumn, after the black berries appeared upon it, theleaves became a rich bronze colour, and some when the first froststouched them curled up at the edge and turned crimson. There were twoor three guelder-rose bushes--the wild shrub--which were covered inJune with white bloom; not in snowy balls like the garden variety, butflat and circular, the florets at the edge of the circle oftenwhitest, and those in the centre greenish. In autumn the slenderboughs were weighed down with heavy bunches of large purplish berries, so full of red juice as to appear on the point of bursting. As thesesoon disappeared they were doubtless eaten by birds. 

Besides the hawthorn and briar there were several species ofwillow--the snake-skin willow, so called because it sheds its bark;the 'snap-willow, ' which is so brittle that every gale breaks off itsfeeble twigs, and pollards. One of these, hollow and old, had upon itstop a crowd of parasites. A bramble had taken root there, and hungover the side; a small currant-bush grew freely--both, no doubt, unwittingly planted by birds--and finally the bines of the noxiousbitter-sweet or nightshade, starting from the decayed wood, supportedthemselves among the willow-branches, and in autumn were bright withred berries. Ash-stoles, the buds on whose boughs in spring are hiddenunder black sheaths; nut-tree stoles, with ever-welcome nuts--alwaysstolen here, but on the Downs, where they are plentiful, staying tillthey fall; young oak growing up from the butt of a felled tree. Onthese oak-twigs sometimes, besides the ordinary round galls, there maybe found another gall, larger, and formed, as it were, of green scalesone above the other. 

Where shall we find in the artificial and, to my thinking, tastelesspleasure-grounds of modern houses so beautiful a shrubbery as this oldhedgerow? Nor were evergreens wanting, for the ivy grew thickly, andthere was one holly-bush--not more, for the soil was not affected byholly. The tall cow-parsnip or 'gicks' rose up through the bushes; thegreat hollow stem of the angelica grew at the edge of the field, onthe verge of the grass, but still sheltered by the brambles. Somereeds early in spring thrust up their slender green tubes, tipped withtwo spear-like leaves. The reed varies in height according to theposition in which it grows. If the hedge has been cut it does notreach higher than four or five feet; when it springs from a deep, hollow corner, or with bushes to draw it up, you can hardly touch itstip with your walking-stick. The leaders of the black bryony, liftingthemselves above the bushes, and having just there nothing to clingto, twist around each other, and two bines thus find mutual supportwhere one alone would fall of its own weight. 

In the watery places the sedges send up their dark flowers, dustedwith light yellow pollen, rising above the triangular stem with itsnarrow, ribbed leaf. The reed-sparrow or bunting sits upon the sprayover the ditch with its carex grass and rushes; he is a graceful bird, with a crown of glossy black. Hops climb the ash and hang theirclusters, which impart an aromatic scent to the hand that plucks them;broad burdock leaves, which the mouchers put on the top of theirbaskets to shield their freshly gathered watercresses from thesunshine; creeping avens, with buttercup-like flowers and long stemsthat straggle across the ditch, and in autumn are tipped with a smallball of soft spines; mints, strong-scented and unmistakable; yarrow, white and sometimes a little lilac, whose flower is perhaps almost thelast that the bee visits. In the middle of October I have seen a wildbee on a last stray yarrow. 

On the higher and drier bank some few slender square stems of betony, with leaves in pairs like wings, stand up tall and stiff as the summeradvances. The labiate purplish flowers are all at the top; each floweris set in the cup by a curve at the lesser end, like a crook; theleaves and stalk are slightly rough, and have an aromatic bitterperfume when crushed. On the flower of a great thistle a moth hasalighted, and hidden under its broad wing is a humble-bee, the twohappy together and neither interfering with the other. Sometimes a beewill visit the white rose on the briar. 

Near the gateway, on the edge of the trodden ground, grows a tall, stout, bushy plant, like a shrub, with pale greyish-green leaves, muchlobed and divided: the top of each branch in August is thick withsmall whitish-green flowers tipped with brown. These, if rubbed in thehand, emit a strong and peculiar scent, with a faint flavour oflavender, and yet quite different. This is the mugwort. Still lateron, under the shade of the trees on the mound, there appear bunches ofa pale herb, with greenish labiate flowers, and a scent like hops: itis the woodsage, and if tasted the leaf will be found extremelybitter. 

In the mornings of autumn the webs of the spiders hang along the hedgebowed a little with dew, like hammocks of gossamer slung from thorn tothorn. Then the hedge-sparrows, perching on the topmost boughs of thehawthorn, cry 'peep-peep' mournfully; the heavy dew on the grassbeneath arranges itself in two rows of drops along the edges of theblades. From the day when the first leaf appears upon the hardywoodbine, in the early year, to the time when the partridge finds theeggs in the ant-hill, and on again till the last harebell dies, thereis always something beautiful or interesting in these great hedgerows. Indeed, it is impossible to exhaust them. I have omitted the wildgeranium with its tiny red petals scarce seen in the mass of green, the mosses, the ferns, and have scarcely said a word about the livingcreatures that haunt it. But then one might begin to write a bookabout a hedgerow when a boy and find it incomplete in old age. 

A much-neglected path led from the park through some fir plantationsdown to the fishpond. After the first turn of the narrow track theclose foliage of the firs, through which nothing could be seen, shutout the world with green walls. The strip of blue sky visible abovewas wider than the path, because the trees sloped away somewhat, theirbranches shortening towards the top; still it was so contracted that apassing woodpigeon was seen but for a second as he went over. Everystep carried me into deeper silence--the sudden call of a jay wasstartling in its harsh contrast. Presently the path widened where thethickly planted firs were succeeded by sycamores, horse-chestnuts, alders, and aspen--trees which stand farther apart, and beneath whichsome underwood grew. Here there were thickets of hawthorn and brambleand elder bushes which can find no place among firs. 

The ground now sloped rapidly down into a hollow, and upon thisdescent numbers of skeleton leaves were scattered. There was no otherspot all over the Chace where they could be seen like this; you mightwalk for hours and not find one, yet here there were hundreds. Sometimes they covered the ground in layers, several leaves one on theother. In spring violets pushed up through them and blue-bells--sweethope rising over grey decay. 

Lower down a large pond almost filled the hollow. It was surrounded onthree sides by trees and thickets; on the fourth an irregular marginof marshy grass extended. Floating leaves of weeds covered the surfaceof the water; these weeds had not been disturbed for years, and therewas no check to their growth except their own profusion, for theychoked each other. The pond had long ceased to supply fish for thetable. Before railways brought the sea so near, such ponds were veryuseful. At that time almost everything consumed came from the estateitself: the bread, the beef, the mutton, the venison, game, fish, allwas supplied by the adjacent woods, the fields, or the water. The lordin old days hunted the deer on his own domain, brought down game witha crossbow or captured it with nets, and fished or netted his ownstreams and ponds. These great parks and chaces enclosed everything, so that it was within easy reach of his own door. Sometimes the lordand his visitors strolled out to see the fishponds netted. 

This pond had originally been one of a series, but the others had beendrained and added to the meadows. It was said to be staked at thebottom to prevent illicit netting; but if so, the stakes by this timewere probably rotten or buried in mud formed from the decaying weeds, the fallen leaves, and branches which were gradually closing it up. Afew yards from the edge there was a mass of ivy through which a littlebrown thatch could be distinguished, and on approaching nearer thislow roof was found to cover the entrance to a cave. It was an ice-houseexcavated in the sloping ground or bank, in which, 'when George theThird was King, ' the ice of the ponds had been preserved to cool theowner's wine in summer. Ice was then a luxury for the rich only; butwhen so large a supply arrived from America, a supply increased byfreezing machines, the ice-house lost its importance. The door, onceso jealously closed, was gone, and the dead leaves of last year hadgathered in corners where the winds had whirled them. 

The heat of a warm June day seemed still more powerful in this hollow. The sedges, into which two or three moorhens had retired at myapproach, were still, and the leaves on the boughs overhanging thewater were motionless. Where there was a space free from weeds--adeeper hole near the bank--a jack basked at the surface in thesunshine. High above on the hill stood a tall dead fir, from whosetrunk the bark was falling; it had but one branch, which stood outbare and stark across the sky. There came a sound like distantthunder, but there were no clouds overhead, and it was not possible tosee far round. Pushing gently through the hawthorn bushes andash-stoles at the farther end of the pond, I found a pleasant littlestream rushing swiftly over a clear chalky bottom, hastening away downto the larger brook. 

Beyond it rose a mound and hedgerow, up to which came the meadows, where, from the noise, the cattle seemed racing to and fro, teased byinsects. Tiny black flies alighting on my hands and face, irritatedthe skin; the haymakers call them 'thunder-flies;' but the murmur ofthe running water was so delicious that I sat down on a bulgingtree-root, almost over the stream, and listened to the thrushessinging. Had it been merely warm they would have been silent. They donot sing in dry sunshine, but they knew what was coming; so that thereis no note so hated by the haymaker as that of the thrush. The birdswere not in the firs, but in the ash-trees along the course of therill. 

The voice of the thrush is the most 'cultivated, ' so to speak, of allour birds: the trills, the runs, the variations, are so numerous andcontrasted. Not even the nightingale can equal it: the nightingale hasnot nearly such command: the thrush seems to know no limit. I own Ilove the blackbird best, but in excellence of varied music the thrushsurpasses all. Few birds, except those that are formed for swimming, come to a still pond. They like a clear running stream; they visit thesweet running water for drinking and bathing. Dreaming away the time, listening to the rush of the water bubbling about the stones, I didnot notice that the sky had become overcast, till suddenly a clap ofthunder near at hand awakened me. Some heavy drops of rain fell; Ilooked up and saw the dead branch of the fir on the hill stretched outlike a withered arm across a black cloud. 

Hastening back to the ice-house, I had barely entered the doorway whenthe lightning, visible at noonday, flashed red and threatening, thethunder crackled and snapped overhead, and the rain fell in a whitesheet of water. There were but two of these overpowering dischargeswith their peculiar crack and snap; the electricity passed on quickly, and the next clap roared over the woods. But the rain was heavier thanbefore, the fall increased after every flash, however distant, and thesurface of the pond was threshed by the drops which bore down withthem many leaves weakened by blight. 

Doubtless the mowers in the meadows had hidden the blades of theirscythes under the swathe, and the haymakers had placed their prongs inthe ditches: nothing is so likely to attract a shock of lightning as aprong carried on the shoulder with the bright steel points upwards. Inthe farmhouses the old folk would cover up the looking-glasses lestthe quicksilver should draw the electric fluid. The haymakers willtell you that sometimes when they have been standing under a hedge outof a storm a flash of lightning has gone by with a distinct sound like'swish, ' and immediately afterwards the wet ground has sent forth avapour, or, as they say, smoked. 

Woodpigeons and many other birds seem to come home to woods and copsesbefore and during a storm. The woodpigeon is one of the freest ofbirds to all appearance: he passes over the highest trees and goesstraight away for miles. Yet, though it is usual to speak of wildbirds and of their freedom, the more you watch their ways the more youfeel that the wildest have their routes and customs: that they do notact entirely from the impulse of the moment, but have their unwrittenlaws. How do the gnats there playing under the horse-chestnut boughsescape being struck down by the heavy raindrops, each one of whichlooks as if it would drown so small a creature? The numbers of insectsfar exceed all that words can express: consider the clouds of midgesthat often dance over a stream. One day, chancing to glance at asteeple, I saw what looked like thin smoke issuing from the top of it. Now it shot out in a straight line from the gilded beak of theweathercock, now veered about, or declined from the vane. It was aninnumerable swarm of insects, whose numbers made them visible at thatheight. 

Some insects are much more powerful than would be supposed. A gardenwas enclosed with fresh palings formed of split oak so well seasoned(split oak is the hardest of wood) that it was difficult to train anycreepers against them, for a nail could not be driven in without thehelp of a bradawl. Passing along the path one afternoon I heard apeculiar rasping sound like a very small saw at work, and found itproceeded from four wasps biting the oak for the materials of theirnest. The noise they made was audible four or five yards away, andupon looking closer I found the palings all scored and marked in shortshallow grooves. The scores and marks extended along that part of thepalings where the sunshine usually fell; there were none on the shadyside, the wasps preferring to work in the sunlight. 

Soon the clouds began to break, and then the sun shone on innumerablerain-drops. I at once started forth, knowing that such a storm isoften followed by several lesser showers with brief intervals between. The deserted ice-house was rarely visited--only, perhaps, when someborage was wanted to put in summer drinks. For a thick growth ofborage had sprung up by it, where perhaps a small garden patch hadonce been cultivated, for there was a pear-tree near. The plant, withits scent of cucumber, grew very strong; the blue flowers when fallen, if they had not been observed when growing, might be supposed to havebeen inserted exactly upside down to their real manner of attachment. In autumn the leaves of the pear-tree reddened, and afterwards the ivyover the entrance to the ice-house flowered; then in the cold months ofearly spring the birds came for the ivy-berries. 

CHAPTER VI. 

A FARMER OF THE OLDEN TIMES. 

The winding paths traced by a hare in spring as he roams over anarable field show that he must cover a mile within a furlong. From agateway one morning I watched a hare busy in this way, restlesslypassing to and fro over the 'lands. ' Every motion was visible, because, although the green wheat was rising in an adjacent field, nocrop had yet appeared here. Now the hare came direct towards me, running down a furrow; then he turned short and followed a course likethe letter V; next he crossed the angle of the field and came backalong the shore of the ditch, under the hedge. Then away to the centreof the field, where he stayed some time exploring up one furrow anddown another, his ears and the hump of his back only seen above theclods. 

But suddenly he caught a scent of something that alarmed him, and awayhe went full speed: when on the open ground the peculiar way in whichthe hind limbs are thrown forward right under the body, thus giving animmense 'stride, ' was clearly displayed. I had been so interested inthe hare that I had not observed Hilary coming along on the other sideof the low fence, looking at his wheat. The hare, busy as he was andseeming to see nothing, had crossed his 'wind. ' Hilary came to me, andwe walked together along the waggon-track, repassing the wheat. He wasfull about it: he was always grieving over the decadence of the wheatcrop. 

There was nothing, he went on, so pleasant to watch as it came up, nothing that required so much care and skill, nothing so thoroughlyassociated with the traditions of English farming as wheat, and yetnothing so disappointing. Foreign importations had destroyed this thevery mainstay. Now, that crop which he had just left had 'tilleredout' well; but what profit should he get from the many stalks that hadtillered or sprung from each single grain, thus promising a fiftyfoldreturn? It had been well got in, and, as the old saw had it, 'Wellsown, half grown;' it had been in the ground the proper time ('Long inthe bed, big in the head'); but likely enough the price next autumnwould not much more than pay the expenses of preparation. 

The thunderstorm before Christmas was not perhaps a favourable omen, since

 Winter's thunder and summer's flood Bode old England no good. 

Last year showed that 'summer's flood' was as destructive as in theolden time. But then there would have been a rise of prices, accordingto the saying, --

 When the vale shall feed the hill, Every man shall eat his fill. But when the hill shall feed the vale, The penny loaf shall be but small. 

Now, last season, so far as our home harvests were concerned, the'hill' did feed the 'vale, ' but the penny loaves were as large and asplentiful as usual, owing to foreign grain. In those old days, seventyor eighty years since, the whole population of the kingdom watched theweather with anxiety; and it was then that the signs and tokens ofbirds and plants and the set of the wind at particular times wereregarded as veritable oracles to be inquired into not without fear andtrembling. 

Hilary heard all about it when he was a lad from old Jonathan, who hada corn-farm up on the hills, and where he used to go to plough. Hilarynever stated the exact degree, but there was some relationship betweenthem--two branches, I fancy, of the same family. He seemed to have avery bitter memory of the old man (now dead), who had been a hardmaster to him in his youth; besides which, some family jar had arisenover money matters; still, he was fond of quoting Jonathan in referenceto wheat and the heyday of corn-farming. Jonathan remembered when aload of wheat fetched 55_l. _--a load being five quarters or tensacks--or 11_l. _ a quarter. The present average of wheat was about2_l. _ 6_s. _ per quarter. At the same time bread was at 3_s. _ a gallon;it is now about 1_s. _ 6_d. _ The wages of an agricultural labourer were6_s. _ a week. It was gambling, positive gambling, in the staff oflife. 

No farmer was held in any esteem if he did not keep his wheat rickstill harvest came again before threshing them out: men grew richsuddenly and knew not what to do with their money. Farmers who hadbeen brought up 'hard, ' living like labourers, working like labourers, and with little more amusement than labourers, all at once found theirpockets full of coin. The wheat they had been selling at 5_l. _ a loadran up to 50_l. _ With their purses thus crammed full, what were theyto do? There was nothing but drink, and they did drink. 

In those days the farmer in his isolated homestead was more cut offfrom the world than the settler at the present time in the backwoodsor on the prairies. The telegraph wires span the continent of America, and are carried across the dry deserts of Australia. Wherever thesettler may be, he is never very far from the wires or the railway;the railway meets the ocean steamer; and we can form no conception ofthe utter lack of communication in the old world of our immediateforefathers. The farmer, being away from the main road and the trackof the mail coaches, knew no one but his neighbours, saw no one, andheard but little. Amusements there were none, other than could be hadat the alehouse or by riding into the market town to the inn there. Sothat when this great flush of prosperity came upon them, old Jonathanand his friends had nothing to do but drink. 

Up at The Idovers, as his place was called, a lonely homestead on aplain between the Downs, they used to assemble, and at once put up theshutters, whether it was dark or not, not wishing to know whether itwas day or night. Sometimes the head carter would venture in forinstructions, and be gruffly told to take his team and do so and so. 'Eez, zur, ' he would reply, 'uz did thuck job isterday. ' His masterhad ordered him to do it the day before, but was oblivious thattwenty-four hours had passed. The middle-aged men stood thiscontinuous drinking without much harm, their constitutions havingbecome hardened and 'set, ' but it killed off numbers of the youngermen. 

They drank ale principally--strong ale, for at that time in lonelyfarmhouses they were guiltless of wines and spirits. But the enormousprice of 50_l. _ per load suggested luxuries, and it was old Jonathanat The Idovers who introduced gin. Till then no gin even--nothing butale--had been consumed in that far-away spot; but Jonathan brought inthe gin, which speedily became popular. He called it 'spoon-drink' (aspoon being used with the sugar) as a distinguishing name, and asspoon-drink accordingly it was known. When any one desired to reducethe strength of his glass, they did indeed pour him out some morewater from the kettle; but having previously filled the kettle withthe spirit, his last state became worse than the first. 

While thus they revelled, the labourers worked with the flails in thebarn threshing out the truly golden grain. The farmers used to takepains to slip round upon them unexpectedly, or meet them as they weregoing home from work, in order to check the pilfering of the wheat. The labourer was not paid wholly in cash; he had a bushel of the'tail, ' or second flour, from the mill in lieu of money, settling oncea month. Their life was hard indeed. But the great prosperity whichhad come upon the farmers did them no good. In too many cases itmelted away in drink. The habit of drinking became settled in afamily. Bad habits endured after the prosperity had departed; and insome cases those who had once owned their farms as well as occupiedthem had to quit the homes of their forefathers. Here and there one, however, laid the foundation of a fortune, as fortunes are understoodin the country; and shrewd old Jonathan was one of these. 

Even down to very recent days a spell of drinking--simple drinking--wasthe staple amusement of many an otherwise respectable farmer. Not manyyears since it was not unusual for some well-to-do farmer of the oldschool to ride off on his nag, and not be heard of for a week, till hewas discovered at a distant roadside inn, where he had spent theinterval in straightforward drinking. These habits are now happilyextinct. It was in those old times that wheat was bought and hoardedwith the express object of raising the price to famine pitch: a thingthen sometimes practicable, though not always successful. Thus in 1801the price of wheat in March was 55_l. _ per load, while in October ithad fallen to 15_l. _ Men forgot the misery of the poor in theireagerness for guineas. 

Hilary, with all his old prejudices, was not so foolish as to desire areturn of times like that. He had undergone privation himself inyouth, for farmers' sons were but a little better off than plough-ladseven in his early days; and he did not wish to make money by anotherman's suffering. Still he was always grieving about the wheat crop, and how it had fallen in estimation. It was a sight to see the gustowith which he would run his hand into a sack of wheat to sample it. 'Here, feel this, ' he would say to me, 'you can slip your hand in upto your elbow; and now hold up your palm--see, the grains are as plumpas cherry-stones. '

After hearing Hilary talk so much of old Jonathan I thought I shouldlike to see the place where he had lived, and later in the seasonwalked up on the hills for that purpose. The stunted fir-trees on theDown gave so little shadow that I was glad to find a hawthorn underwhose branches I could rest on the sward. The prevalent winds ofwinter sweeping without check along the open slope had bent thehawthorn before them, and the heat of the sultry summer day appearedthe greater on that exposed height. On either hand hills succeeded tohills, and behind I knew they extended farther than the eye couldreach. Immediately beneath in front there was a plain, at its extremeboundary a wood, and beyond that the horizon was lost in the summerhaze. Wheat, barley, and oats--barley and wheat and beans, completelyoccupied the plain. It was one vast expanse of cereals, without a signof human life; for the reaper had not yet commenced, and the bailiffs'cottages were hidden among the ricks. There was an utter silence atnoonday; nothing but yellowing wheat beneath, the ramparts of thehills around, and the sun above. 

But, though out of sight, there was a farmhouse behind a small copseand clump of elms full of rooks' nests, a short way from the foot ofthe Down. This was The Idovers, once the residence of old Jonathan; itwas the last farm before reaching the hill district proper, and fromthe slope here all the fields of which it consisted were visible. Thehouse was small, for in those days farmers did not look to live invillas, and till within the last few years even the parlour floor wasof stone flags. Rushes used to be strewn in the halls of palaces inancient times, and seventy years ago old Jonathan grew his owncarpets. 

The softest and best of the bean straw grown on the farm was selectedand scattered on the floor of the sitting-rooms as warm and dry to thefeet, and that was all the carpet in the house. Just beforesheep-shearing time, too, Jonathan used to have the nettles cut thatflourished round the back of the sheds, and strewn on the floor of thebarn. The nettles shrivelled up dry, and the wool did not stick tothem, but could be gathered easily. 

With his own hands he would carry out a quart of beans to thepigs---just a quart at a time and no more, that they might eat everyone and that none might be wasted. So, too, he would carry them a fewacorns in his coat-pocket, and watch the relish with which the swinedevoured their favourite food. He saved every bit of crooked wood thatwas found about the place; for at that date iron was expensive, andwood that had grown crooked and was therefore strong as well as curvedwas useful for a hundred purposes. Fastened to a wall, for instance, it did for a hook upon which to hang things. If an apple-tree died inthe orchard it was cut out to form part of a plough and saved tillwanted. 

Jonathan's hard head withstood even the whirl of the days when cornwas at famine prices. But these careful economies, this continualsaving, put more money in his purse than all that sudden flush ofprosperity. Every groat thus saved was as a nail driven into an oak, fixed and stable, becoming firmer as time went on. How strangelydifferent the farmers of to-day, with a score of machines andappliances, with expensive feeding-stuffs, with well-furnished villas!Each one of Jonathan's beans in his quart mug, each one of the acornsin his pocket became a guinea. 

Jonathan's hat was made to measure on his own special block by thehatter in Overboro' town, and it was so hard and stout that he couldsit upon it without injury. His top-boots always hung near thefireplace, that they might not get mouldy; and he rode into marketupon his 'short-tail horse, ' as he called his crop-tail nag. A farmerwas nothing thought of unless he wore top-boots, which seemed adistinguishing mark, as it were, of the equestrian order ofagriculture. 

But his shoes were made straight; not as now one to each foot--a rightand left--but each exactly alike; and he changed his shoes everymorning, wearing one on one foot one day and on the other the next, that they might not get worn to either foot in particular. Shoeslasted a great length of time in those days, the leather being alltanned with oak bark only, and thoroughly seasoned before it was cutup. There is even a story of a farmer who wore his best shoes everySunday for seven years in Sundays--fifty years--and when he died hadthem buried with him, still far from worn out. 

A traveller once returned from America--in those days a very far-offland--and was recounting the wonders he had seen, and among them howthe folk there used sleighs, not only for driving in but for theremoval of heavy goods. But Jonathan did not think it strange, sincewhen he was young wheeled vehicles were not so common. He had himselfseen loads of hay drawn home on 'sleds' from English meadows, andcould tell where a 'sled' had last been used. There were aged menliving about the hamlet in his day--if that could be called a hamletin which there were barely a score of people, all told--who couldrecollect when the first waggon came to The Idovers. At all events, they pointed out a large field, called the Conigers, where it wastaken to turn it round; for it was constructed in so primitive a stylethat the forewheels would not pass under the body, and thus required awhole field to turn in. 

At that date folk had no banking accounts, but kept their coin in astrong chest under the bed, sometimes hiding it in strange places. Jonathan was once visiting a friend, and after they had hobnobbed awhile the old fellow took him, with many precautions that they shouldnot be observed, into the pig-sty and showed him fifty guineas hid inthe thatch. That was by no means all his property, but the old fellowsaid, with a wink, that he liked to have a little hoard of his ownthat his wife knew nothing about. 

Some land being put up for sale, after biddings by the well-to-doresidents, an old dealer in a very small way, as was supposed, bidabove them all. The company looked upon him with contempt, and hisoffer was regarded as mere folly; but he produced a nail-bag fromunder his coat and counted out the money. A nail-bag is made of thecoarsest of all kinds of sacking. In this manner the formergeneration, eschewing outward show, collected their money coin bycoin, till at last they became substantial men and owners of realestate. So few were the conveniences of life that men had often toleave the road and cross several fields out of their way to lighttheir pipes at a burning couch-heap or lime-kiln. 

They prided themselves then in that hill district that they hadneither a cow nor a poor married man in the parish. There was no cow, because it was entirely a corn-growing place. The whole residentpopulation was not much over a score, and of the labourers theyboasted not one was married. For in those old times each parish keptits own poor, and consequently disliked an increase of the population. The farmers met in vestry from time to time to arrange for the supportof the surplus labour; the appearance of a fresh family would havemeant a fresh tax upon them. They regarded additional human beings asan incumbrance. 

The millers sent their flour round the country then on packhorses;waggons and carts were not so common as now, while the ways, when youonce quitted the main road, were scarcely passable. Even the mainroads were often in such a state that foot-passengers could not getalong, but left the road and followed a footpath just inside thehedge. Such footpaths ran beside the roads for miles; here and therein country places a short section of such tracks may still be found. 'Pack-roads, ' too, may be occasionally met with, retaining theirdesignation to this day. It was the time of the great wars with theFirst Napoleon; and the poor people, as the wheat went up to famineprices, were often in a strait for bread. When the miller's packhorseappeared the cottagers crowded round and demanded the price: if it hadrisen a penny, the infuriated mob of women would sometimes pull themiller's boy off the horse and duck him in the village pond. 

The memory of those old times is still vivid in farmhouses, and atHilary's I have myself handled old Jonathan's walking-staff, which heand his father before him used in traversing on foot those perilousroads. It was about five feet long, perhaps more, an inch and a halfin diameter, and shod with an iron ferrule and stout spike. With thishe could prod the sloughs and ascertain their depth, or use it as aleaping-pole; and if threatened by sturdy rogues whirl it about theirheads as a quarter-staff. 

Wars and famines were then terrible realities--men's minds were fullof them, and superstition flourished. The foggers and shepherds sawsigns in the sky and read the stars. Down at Lucketts' Place onewinter's night, when folk almost fancied they could hear the roar ofNapoleon's cannon, the old fogger came rushing in with the news thatthe armies could be seen fighting in the heavens. It was an aurora, the streamers shooting up towards the zenith, and great red spotsamong the stars, the ghastly stains of the wounded. The old foggerdeclared that as he went out with his lantern to attend to the cowscalving he could see the blood dripping on the back of his hand as itfell down from the battling hosts above. 

To us the ignorance even of such comparatively recent times is almostincredible. As Hilary was telling me of such things as we sat in hishouse one evening, there grew upon our ears a peculiar sound, ahumming deep bass, somewhat resembling the low notes of a piano with apressure on the pedal. It increased and became louder, coming from theroad which passed the house; it was caused by a very large flock ofsheep driven slowly. The individual 'baa' of each lamb was so mixed, as it were, with the bleat of its fellow that the swelling sound tooka strange, mysterious tone; a voice that seemed to speak of trouble, and perplexity, and anxiety for rest. Hilary, as a farmer, must ofcourse go out to see whose they were, and I went with him; but beforehe reached the garden gate he turned back, remarking, 'It's Johnson'sflock; I know the tang of his tankards. ' The flat-shaped bells hung ona sheep's neck are called tankards; and Hilary could distinguish oneflock from another by the varying notes of their bells. 

Reclining on the sweet short sward under the hawthorn on the Down Ilooked over the Idover plain, and thought of the olden times. As Igazed I presently observed, far away beside some ricks, the shortblack funnel of an engine, and made it out to be a steam-ploughwaiting till the corn should be garnered to tear up the stubble. Howmuch meaning there lay in the presence of that black funnel! Therewere the same broad open fields, the same beautiful crops of goldenwheat, the same green hills, and the same sun ripening the grain. Buthow strangely changed all human affairs since old Jonathan, in hisstraight-made shoes, with his pike-staff, and the acorns in hispocket, trudged along the footpaths!

CHAPTER VII. 

THE CUCKOO-FIELDS. 

The cuckoos came so frequently to some grass-land just outside theChace and sloping down to the brook that I gave the spot the name ofthe Cuckoo-fields. There were two detached copses in them of no greatextent, and numerous oaks and hawthorns, while the brook below wasbordered with willow-stoles. This stretch of grass was divided intotwo large fields by a line of decaying posts and rails, and it becamea favourite resort of mine in the warm days of spring, because I couldalmost always see and hear the cuckoos there. 

Why they should love it so much is not easy to tell, unless on accountof the comparatively barren character of the soil. The earth seemed tobe of a very different kind to that in the rich and fertile meadowsand fields close by; for the grass was rough, short, and thin, andsoon became greyish or brown as the summer advanced, burning or dryingup under the sun. It may often be observed that a piece of waste, likefurze, when in the midst of good land, is much frequented by all birdsand animals, though where there is nothing else but waste they areoften almost entirely absent. 

As the oaks come out into full leaf, the time when the meadows becomebeautiful, the notes of the cuckoo sound like a voice crying 'Comehither' from the trees. Then, sitting on the grey and lichen-coveredrail under the cover of a hawthorn, I saw sometimes two and sometimesthree cuckoos following each other courting, now round the copse, nowby the hedge or the brook, and presently along the rails where theyconstantly perched. Occasionally one would alight on the sward amongthe purple flowers of the meadow orchis. From the marshy meadow acrossthe brook apeew it rose from time to time, uttering his plaintive calland wheeling to and fro on the wing. At the sound a second and a thirdappeared in succession, and after beating up and down for a fewminutes settled again in the grass. The meadow might have been calleda plovery--as we say rookery and heronry--for the green plovers orpeewits always had several nests in it. 

The course of the humble bees that went by could be watched for someway--their large size and darker colour made them visible--as they nowwent down into the grass, and now started forward again. The honeybees, small and somewhat lighter in colour, could not be seen so far. They were busy in the sunshine, for the hive bee must gather most ofits honey before the end of July, before the scythe has laid the grassin the last meadow low. Few if any flowers come up after the scythehas gone over, except the white clover, which almost alone shows inthe aftermath, or, as country people call it, the 'lattermath. ' Nearme a titlark every few minutes rose from the sward, and spreading hiswings came down aslant, singing with all his might. 

Some sarsen stones just showed above the grass: the old folk say thatthese boulders grow in size and increase in number. The fact is thatin some soils the boulder protrudes more and more above the surface inthe course of time, and others come into view that were once hidden;while in another place the turf rises, and they seem to slowly sinkinto the earth. The monotonous and yet pleasing cry of the peewits, the sweet titlark singing overhead, and the cuckoos flying round, filled the place with the magic charm of spring. 

Coming to these Cuckoo-fields day after day, there was alwayssomething to interest me, either in the meadows themselves or on theway thither. The very dust of the road had something to show. Forunder the shadowy elms a little seed or grain had jolted down throughthe chinks in the bed of a passing waggon, and there the chaffinchesand sparrows had congregated. As they moved to and fro they had leftthe marks of their feet in the thick white dust, so crossed andintertangled in a maze of tracks that no one could have designed sodelicate and intricate a pattern. If it was cloudy, still, glancingover the cornfields, just as you turned partly round to look, thereseemed a brilliant streak of sunshine across them. This was a broadband of charlock: its light yellow is so gaudy and glaring in the massthat as it first catches the eye it seems as if the land were lit upby the sun. After it the buttercups appear of a quiet colour, likedead gold in contrast. 

Under-foot, almost in the very dust of the road, the silverweed openedits yellow petals, and where there was a dry bank, or by the gatewaysleading into the corn, the pink pimpernel grew. For some time Isuspected the pimpernel of not invariably closing its petals beforerain, and at last by precise observation found that it did not. Twicein a comparatively short period I noted the petals wide open within afew minutes of a shower. It appears rather to close during theatmospheric change which occurs previous to rain than to rain itself. Once now and then a shower seems to come up in the driest weatherwithout warning or change in the atmosphere: the cloud is over andgone almost before it seems worth while to take shelter. To theapproach of such shower-clouds the pimpernel does not invariablyrespond, but it is perfectly accurate if anything serious be brewing. By a furrow in the sward by the roadside there grew a little piece ofsome species of gorse--so small and delicate, with the tiniest yellowflowers, that it was well worthy of a place where it would be admired;for few could have seen it hidden there. 

Birds'-foot lotus covered the sward of one part of the Cuckoo-fields, on the higher ground near the woods, where the soil was dry; and bythe hedge there were some bushy plants of the rest-harrow, whoseprickly branches repel cattle and whose appearance reproaches thefarmer for neglect. Yet though an outcast with animals and men, itbears a beautiful flower, butterfly-shaped and delicately tinted withpink. Now, as the days roll on, the blue succory and the scarletpoppies stand side by side in the yellow wheat but just outside myCuckoo-fields, and one or two stray corncockles bloom; they are notcommon here and are perhaps brought from a distance. Here you may walkmany miles and even wait several harvests to see a corncockle. 

The thistledown floats; and see, yonder the white balls are rollingbefore the gentle air along the very tips of the bronzing wheat-ears. By the hedge the straggling stalks of St. John's wort lift the yellowpetals dotted with black specks above the bunches of grass. Theleaves, held up to the light, seem to have numerous eyelets, as ifpricked but not quite through--windows in the leaf. In the grass theshort selfheal shows; and, leaning over the gate, on the edge of thewheat you may see the curious prickly seed-vessels of the cornbuttercup--the 'hedgehog'--whose spines, however, will not scratch thesoftest skin. 

Resting on the rail under the hawthorn for a minute or two in earlyspring, when it was too chilly to stay long, I watched a flock ofrooks and jackdaws soaring in the sky. Round and round and everupwards they circled, the jackdaws of course betraying their presenceby their call; up towards the blue, as if in the joy of their hearts, they held a festival, happy in the genial weather and the approach ofthe nesting-time. This soaring and wheeling is evidently done forrecreation, like a dance. Presently the flock seems to tumble andfall, and there comes the rushing sound of the air swiftly parted bytheir out-spread wings as they dive a hundred feet in a second. Thenoise is audible a quarter of a mile off. This, too, is play; for, catching themselves and regaining their balance just above the elms, they resume their steady flight onwards to distant feeding-grounds. Later in the season, sitting there in the warm evenings, I could hearthe pheasants utter their peculiar roost-cry, and the noise of theirwings as they flew up in the wood: the vibration is so loud that itmight almost be described as thumping. 

By-and-by the cuckoo began to lose his voice; he gurgled and gasped, and cried 'cuck--kuk--kwai--kash, ' and could not utter the soft, melodious 'oo. ' The latest date on which I ever heard the cuckoo here, to be certain, was the day before St. Swithin, July 14, 1879. Thenightingales, too, lose their sweet notes, but not their voices; theyremain in the hedges long after their song has ceased. Passing by thehawthorn bushes up to the end of July, you may hear a bird within thatseems to threaten you with a loud 'sweet-kurr, ' and, looking in, youwill find it to be a nightingale. The spelling exactly represents thesound, 'r' being twirled. 'Sweet-kurr-kurr' comes from the interior ofthe bushes with an angry emphasis. 

Along the lower part of these meadows there was a brook, and thebrook-sparrows were chattering ceaselessly as I walked among thewillow-stoles by it one morning towards the end of June. On the lefthand the deep stream flowed silently round its gentle curves, and onthe other through the willows and alders the grassy slope of theCuckoo-fields was visible. Broad leaves of the marsh marigold, theflower long since gone, covered the ground; light-green horsetailswere dotted thickly about; and tall grasses flourished, rising to theknee. Dark shallow pools were so hidden under these grasses and plantsthat the presence of the black and yet clear water could not beperceived until the foot sank into it. 

The sedge-birds kept just in front of me, now busy on a willow-stole, and concealed in the grasses and moss which grew out of the decayingwood; now among the sedges covering the mudbanks where the brook hadsilted up; now in the hedge which divided the willows from the meadow. Still the peculiar sparrow-like note, the ringing chirp, camecontinually from their throats; the warm sultry day delighted them. One clung to the side of a slender flag, which scarcely seemed strongenough to support it, yet did not even bend under its weight; then onagain as I came nearer--but only two or three yards--to recommencesinging immediately. 

Pushing through the brushwood and past the reddish willow-poles, Ientered a very thicket of flags, rising to the shoulder. These werenot ribbed or bayonet-shaped, but flat, like a long sword. Three orfour sprang from a single root, broad and tall, and beside them astalk, and on it the yellow iris in fall flower. The marsh seemed litup with these bright lamps of colour under the shadowy willows and thedark alders. There were a dozen at least within a few yards closearound, and others dimly visible through the branches--three largeyellow petals drooping, and on the curve of each brownish mottledmarkings or lines delicately stippled, beside them a rolled spike-likebloom not yet unfolded: a flower of the waters, crowned with gold, above the green dwellers by the shore. 

Here the sedge-birds left me, doubling back to their favouritewillow-stoles and sedges. Further on, the ground rose, and on thedrier bank the 'gicks' grew shoulder high, towering over the brambles. It was difficult to move through the tangled underwood, so I went outinto the Cuckoo-fields. Hilary had drained away much of the water thatused to form a far larger marsh about here, and calculated hislevellings in a most ingenious manner with a hollow 'gicks. ' He took awooden bowl, and filled it to the brim with water. Then cutting a dry'gicks' so that it should be open at either end, like a tube, hefloated it--the stalk is very light--on the bowl. Looking through thistube he could get his level almost as accurately as with an engineer'sinstrument, though of course it was more cumbrous to use. 

There was a corner here that had not been mown for a long time, and inthe autumn the wild carrots took possession of it, almost to theexclusion of grass and other plants. The flower of the wild carrotgathers together as the seeds mature, and forms a framework cup at thetop of the stalk, like a bird's-nest. These 'bird's-nests, ' brown andweather-beaten, endured far into the winter. The brook-sparrows stillsang as I passed by again in the evening; they seem the most unweariedof birds, for you may hear them all day, all the evening, and at oneo'clock next morning; indeed, at intervals, all night. By night thenote is, or appears to be, less sparrow-like, or perhaps the silenceof night improves it to the ear. I stayed that evening in a corner ofa wheatfield not yet yellow, and watched the shadows of the trees growlonger and broader as the sun declined. 

As the breeze rushed over the corn there was a play of various shadesof green, the stalks as they bent this and that way taking differenthues. But under the hedge it was still; the wind could not comethrough, though it moved the boughs above. A mass of cloud like flocksof wool, mottled and with small spaces of blue between, drifted slowlyeastwards, and its last edge formed an arch over the western horizon, under which the sun shone. The yellow vetchling had climbed up fromthe ditch and opened its flower, and there were young nuts on thehazel bough. Far away in a copse a wood-pigeon called; nearer theblackbirds were whistling; a willow wren uttered his note high in theelm, and a distant yellowhammer sang to the sinking sun. 

The brook had once been much wider, and in flood times rendered theOverboro' road almost impassable; for before a bridge was built itspread widely and crossed the highway--a rushing, though shallow, torrent fifty yards broad. The stumps of the willows that had grown byit could still be found in places, and now and then an ancient'bullpoll' was washed up. This grass is so tough that the tufts orcushions it forms will last in water for fifty years, even when rootedup--decayed of course and black, but still distinguishable. In thosetimes just previous to the construction of railways, when the lord ofthe manor came down after Parliament rose, there used to be acompetition to get hold of his coachman. So few agricultural peopletravelled, and news came so slowly and in such distorted fashion, thatthe coachman became a great authority. Such a brook as this was thenoften a serious obstacle. 

There was still an old punt, seldom used, to be found in a rickyard ofHilary's, close by which was an extensive pond. The punt was thatchedover with flags from the stream. The moorhens were fond of this pondbecause it was surrounded with a great quantity of rushes; they werenumerous all up the brook. These birds, being tame and common, are notmuch regarded either for sport or the table, yet a moorhen shot at theright time of the year--not till the frosts have begun--is deliciouseating. If the bird were rare it would be thought to rival thewoodcock; as it is, probably few people ever taste it. The path toLucketts' Place from this rickyard passed a stone-quarry, where theexcavated stone was built up in square heaps. In these heaps, in whichthere were many interstices and hollows, rabbits often sat out; and bystopping the entrance and carefully removing the stones they mightoccasionally be taken by hand. Next by the barn where in spring thesparrows made a continuous noise, chirping and quarrelling as theycarried on their nesting operations: they sometimes flew up with longgreen bennets and grass fibres as well as with dry straws. 

Then across the road, where the flint-heaps always put me in mind ofyoung Aaron; for he once gravely assured me that they were the verybest places in the world on which to rest or sleep. The flints weredry, and preserved the slumbering wayfarer from damp. He had no doubtproved this when the ale was too strong. At the house, as I passedthrough the courtyard, I found him just on the point of starting forOverboro' with a wallet, to bring back some goods from the shops. Thewallet is almost unknown even in farmsteads now: it is a kind of longbag closed at each end, but with a slit in the centre for theinsertion of the things to be conveyed. When filled it is slung overthe shoulder, one end in front and the other behind, so as to balance. Without knowing the shape of a wallet the story of Jack theGiant-Killer stowing away such enormous quantities of pudding isscarcely to be understood: children nowadays never see such a thing. Many nursery tales contain allusions of this kind, the meaning ofwhich must be obscure to the rising generation. 

Within doors I found a great discussion going forward between Hilaryand a farmer who had called, as to the exact relationship of a man whohad just quitted his tenancy and another who died nearly forty yearsbefore. They could not agree either as to the kinship or the date;though the visitor was the more certain because he so well rememberedthat there was an extraordinary cut of 'turvin' that year. The'turvin' is the hay made on the leaze, not the meadows, out of therough grass and bennets left by the cows. To listen to the zest withwhich they entered into the minutest details of the family affairs ofso long ago, concerning people with whom neither had anyconnection--how they recollected the smallest particulars--wasastonishing. This marvellous capacity for gossip seemed like arevelation of a totally different state of society. The memory ofcountry people for such details is beyond belief. 

When the visitor left with his wife we walked to the gate and saw themdown the road; and it was curious to note that they did not walk sideby side. If you meet a farmer of the old style and his wife walkingtogether, never do you see them arm-in-arm. The husband walks a yardor two in front, or else on the other side of the road; and this evenwhen they are going to church. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

CICELY'S DAIRY. HILARY'S TALK. 

Just outside the palings of the courtyard at Lucketts' Place, in frontof the dairy, was a line of damson and plum trees standing in a narrowpatch bordered by a miniature box-hedge. The thrushes were alwayssearching about in this box, which was hardly high enough to hidethem, for the snails which they found there. They broke the shells onthe stone flags of the garden path adjacent, and were often sointently occupied in the box as to seem to fly up from under the veryfeet of any one who passed. 

Under the damson tree the first white snowdrops came, and thecrocuses, whose yellow petals often appeared over the snow, andpresently the daffodils and the beautiful narcissus. There werecowslips and primroses, too, which the boys last year had plantedupside down that they might come variegated. The earliest violet wasgathered there, for the corner was enclosed on three sides, andsomehow the sunshine fell more genially in that untrimmed spot than informal gardens where it is courted. Against the house a pear wastrained, and opened its white bloom the first of all: in its shelterthe birds built their nests. The chaffinches called cheerfully on theplum-trees and sang in the early morning. When the apples bloomed, thegoldfinches visited the same trees at least once a day. 

A damask rose opened its single petals, the sweetest-scented of allthe roses; there were a few strawberries under the wall of the house;by-and-by the pears above enlarged, and the damsons were coated withthe bloom. On the tall plum-trees hung the large purplish-red plums:upon shaking the tree, one or two came down with a thud. The branchesof the damsons depended so low, looking, as it were, right into thecourt and pressing the fruit against your very face as you entered, that you could not choose but take some when it was ripe. Ablue-painted barrel-churn stood by the door; young Aaron turned it inthe morning, while the finches called in the plum-trees, but now andthen not all the strength of his sturdy shoulders nor patient hours ofturning could 'fetch' the butter, for a witch had been busy. 

Sometimes on entering the dairy in the familiar country way, you mightfind Cicely, now almost come to womanhood, at the cheese-tub. As shebent over it her rounded arms, bare nearly to the shoulder, were lavedin the white milk. It must have been from the dairy that Poppćalearned to bathe in milk, for Cicely's arms shone white and smooth, with the gleam of a perfect skin. But Mrs. Luckett would never let hertouch the salt, which will ruin the hands. Cicely, however, who woulddo something, turned the cheeses in the cheese-room alone. Taking onecorner of the clean cloth in her teeth, in a second, by some dexteroussleight-of-hand, the heavy cheese was over, though ponderous enough topuzzle many a man, especially as it had to come over gently that theshape might not be injured. 

She did it without the least perceptible exertion. At the moment ofthe turn, when the weight must have been felt, there was no knot ofmuscle visible on her arm. That is the difference; for

 When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw

the muscles of the man's limb knot themselves and stand out in boldrelief. The smooth contour of Cicely's arm never varied. Mrs. Luckett, talking about cheese as we watched Cicely one morning, said people'staste have much altered; for she understood they were now fond of aforeign sort that was full of holes. The old saying was that breadshould be full of holes, cheese should have none. Just then Hilaryentered and completed the triad by adding that ale should make you seedouble. 

So he called for the brown jug, and he and I had a glass. On my sideof the jug stood a sportsman in breeches and gaiters, his gunpresented, and ever in the act to fire: his dog pointed, and the birdswere flying towards Hilary. Though rude in design the scene was trueto nature and the times: from the buttons on the coat to the longbarrel of the gun, the details were accurate and nothing improved tosuit the artist's fancy. To me these old jugs and mugs and bowls havea deep and human interest, for you can seem to see and know the menwho drank from them in the olden days. 

Now a tall Worcester vase, with all its elegance and gilding, thoughit may be valued at 5, 000_l. _, lacks that sympathy, and may please theeye but does not touch the heart. For it has never shared in thejovial feast nor comforted the weary; the soul of man has nevercommunicated to it some of its own subtle essence. But this hollowbowl whispers back the genial songs that were shouted over it ahundred years ago. On the ancient Grecian pottery, too, the hunterwith his spear chases the boar or urges his hounds after the flyingdeer; the women are dancing, and you can almost hear the notes of theflute. These things were part of their daily life; these are noimaginary pictures of imaginary and impossible scenes: they are simplyscenes in which every one then took part. So I think that the oldEnglish jugs and mugs and bowls are true art, with something of theantique classical spirit in them, for truly you can read the hearts ofthe folk for whom they were made. They have rendered the interpretationeasy by writing their minds upon them: the motto, 'Prosperity to theFlock, ' for instance, is a good one still; and 'Drink fair; don'tswear, ' is yet a very pleasant and suitable admonition. 

As I looked at the jug, the cat coughed under the table. 'Ah, ' saidMrs. Luckett, 'when the cat coughs, the cold goes through the house. 'Hilary, returning to the subject of the cheese, said that the best wasmade when the herd grazed on old pastures: there was a pasture fieldof his which it was believed had been grazed for fully two hundredyears. When he was a boy, the cheese folk made to keep at home foreating often became so hard that, unable to cut it, they were obligedto use a saw. Still longer ago, they used to despatch a special cheeseto London in the road-waggon; it was made in thin vats (pronounced inthe dairy 'vates'), was soft, and eaten with radishes. Another hardkind was oval-shaped, or like a pear; it was hung up in nets tomature, and traded to the West Indies. 

He looked to see when the moon changed in 'Moore's Almanac, ' which waskept for ready reference on the mantelpiece. Next to Bible andPrayer-book comes old Moore's rubric in the farmhouse--that rubricwhich declares the 'vox stellarum. ' There are old folk who stillregret the amendments in the modern issue, and would have back againthe table which laid down when the influence of the constellations wasconcentrated in each particular limb and portion of the body. In hisoaken cabinet Hilary had 'Moore' from the beginning of the century, orfarther back, for his fathers had saved them before him. On the narrowmargins during his own time he had jotted down notes of remarkableweather and the events of the farm, and could tell you the very daycow 'Beauty' calved twenty years ago. 

I thought the ale good, but Hilary was certain it was not equal towhat he used to brew himself before he had so large an acreage to lookafter, and indeed before the old style of farm-life went out offashion. Then he used to sit up all night watching--for brewing is acritical operation--and looking out of doors now and then to pass thelong hours saw the changes of the sky, the constellations rising insuccession one after the other, and felt the slight variations of thewind and of moisture or dryness in the air which predict the sunshineor the shower of the coming day. He seemed to have thought a good dealin those lonely watches; but he passed it off by referring to themalting. Barn barley was best for malting--_i. E. _ that which had beenstored in a barn and therefore kept perfectly dry, for ricks sometimesget wet before they can be thatched. But barn barley was not oftencome by nowadays, as one by one the old barns disappeared: burnedperhaps, and not rebuilt. He had ceased to brew for some time; Cicelycould, however, remember sipping the sweet wort, which is almost toosweet for the palate after childhood. 

They still baked a batch of bread occasionally, but not all thatwas required. Cicely superintended the baking, passing the barmthrough a sieve with a wisp of clean hay in it. The hay takes offany sourness, and ensures it being perfectly sweet. She knew whenthe oven was hot enough by the gauge-brick: this particular brickas the heat increased became spotted with white, and when it hadturned quite white the oven was ready. The wood embers were rakedout with the scraper, and the malkin, being wetted, cleaned out theashes. 'Thee looks like a gurt malkin' is a common term of reproachamong the poor folk--meaning a bunch of rags on the end of a stick. We went out to look at the oven; and then Mrs. Luckett made me tasteher black-currant gin, which was very good. Presently we went intothe orchard to look at the first apple-tree out in bloom. Whilethere a magpie flew across the meadow, and as I watched it Mrs. Luckett advised me to turn my back and not to look too long in thatdirection. 'For, ' said she, 'one magpie is good luck, but two meansorrow; and if you should see three--goodness!--something awfulmight happen. '[1]

 [1] See Notes. 

One lovely June afternoon as Hilary and I strolled about the fields, we passed some lambs at play. 'Lamb is never good eating withoutsunshine, ' said Hilary. Not only wheat and plants generally butanimals also are affected by the absence of sun, so that the epicureshould hope as devoutly as the farmer that the dull and overcastseason of 1879 will not be repeated. Hilary's remark was founded uponthe experience of long years--such experience as is only to be foundin farmhouses where kindred succeed each other, and hand downpractical observations from father to son. 

The thistles were showing rather strongly in the barley--the result oflast year's rain and the consequent impossibility of proper clearing. These thistles he thought came from portions of the root and not fromseed. Last year all the farmers had been Latter Lammas men. The 1st ofAugust is Lammas Day; and in the old time if a farmer had neglectedhis work and his haymaking was still unfinished on August 13 (_i. E. _old style), he was called in reproach a Latter Lammas man. But lastyear (1879) they were all alike, and the hay was about till September;yet Hilary could recollect it being all done by St. Swithin's, July15. 

Sometimes, however, the skilled and careful agriculturist did notsucceed so well as the lazy one. Once in seven years there came asloven's year, according to the old folk, when the sloven had asplendid crop of wheat and hardly knew where to put it. Such a harvestwas as if a man had gone round his farm with the sun in one hand andthe watering-pot in the other! Last year there had been nearly as muchmathern (wild camomile) and willow-wind (convolvulus and buckwheat) ascrop, and he did not want to see the colt's tail in the sky so oftenagain. The colt's tail is a cloud with a bushy appearance like aragged fringe, and portends rain. 

I remarked that it was curious how thunderstorms sometimes returned onthe same day of the week and at the same hour for a month running. Hilary said they had been known to return every day at the same hour. The most regular operation on a farm is the milking: one summer hisfogger declared it came on to thunder day after day in the afternoonjust as he took his yoke off his shoulders. Such heavy and continuousdownpour not only laid the crops, but might spoil them altogether; forlaid barley had been known to sprout there and then, and was of coursetotally spoiled. It was a mistake to associate thunder solely with hotweather; the old folk used to say that it was never too cold tothunder and never too warm to snow. 

A sweet yet faintly pungent odour came on the light breeze over thenext field--a scent like clover, but with a slight reminiscence of thebean-flower. It arose from the yellow flower of the hop-trefoil: honeysometimes has a flavour which resembles it. The hop-trefoil is afavourite crop for sheep, but Hilary said it was too soft for horses. The poppies were not yet out in the wheat. When in full bloom some ofthe cottagers gather the scarlet flowers in great quantities and fromthem make poppy wine. This liquor has a fine colour and is very heady, and those who make it seem to think much of it. Upon the hills wherefurze grows plentifully the flowers are also collected, and a dyeextracted from them. Ribbons can thus be dyed a bright yellow, but itrequires a large quantity of the flowers. 

A little farther a sheep-dog looked at us from a gateway; and oncoming nearer we found the shepherd busily engaged cutting the feet ofhis sheep one by one with a keen knife. They had got the foot-rot downin a meadow--they do not suffer from it on the arable uplands wherefolded--and the shepherd was now applying a caustic solution. Everyshepherd has his own peculiar specific, which he believes to be theonly certain remedy. 

Tar is used in the sheepfold, just as it used to be when sweetDowsabell went forth to gather honeysuckle and lady's-smock nearlythree centuries since. For the shepherd with whom she fell in lovecarried

 His tar-boxe on his broad belt hong. 

So, too, He leared his sheepe as he him list When he would whistle in his fist;

and the shepherd still guides and encourages his sheep by whistling. 

Hilary said that years ago the dogs kept at farmhouses in thatdistrict did not seem of such good breeds, nor were there so manyvarieties as at present. They were mostly sheep-dogs, or mongrels ofthe sheep-dog cast; for little attention was paid to breed. Dogs ofthis kind, with shaggy black coats and stump tails, could be found atmost farms, and were often of a savage disposition; so much so that itwas occasionally necessary to break their teeth that they might notinjure the sheep. From his description the dogs at the present daymust be far superior; indeed, there seems to have been no variety ofdog and no purity of breed at that time (in that neighbourhood);meaning, of course, outside the gamekeeper's kennels, or the houndsused for hunting. Shepherds like to keep their flock in hurdles, folded as much as possible, that they may not rub their wool off andso get a ragged appearance. Once now and then in wet weather theground becomes so soft that a flock will not move, their narrow feetsinking so deeply in the mud. It is then necessary to 'dog themout'--to set the dog at them--and the excitement, fright, and exertionhave been known to kill one or more of the flock. 

Passing on to the lower grounds, we entered the meadows, where the menwere at haycart. The cart-horses wore glittering brazen ornaments, crescent-shaped, in front of the neck, and one upon the forehead. Havethese ornaments a history?[2] The carters and ploughmen have anold-world vocabulary of their own, saying 'toward' for anything nearor leaning towards you, and 'vrammards' for the reverse. 'Heeld' or'yeeld, ' again, is ploughman's language; when the newly sown corn doesnot 'heeld' or 'yeeld' it requires the harrow. In the next field, which the mowers had but just cut, the men were 'tedding'--_i. E. _spreading the swathe with their prongs. Hilary said that hay was asafe speculation if a man could afford to wait; for every few years itwas sure to be extremely dear, so that the old people said, 'Old hay, old gold. '

 [2] See Notes. 

As we returned towards Lucketts' Place, he pointed out to me a distanthouse upon which he said slates had been first used in thatneighbourhood. Fifty or sixty years since no slates were to be seenthere, and when they began to be introduced the old folk manifestedgreat opposition. They said slate would never last--the moss would eatthrough it, and so cause holes; and, in fact, some of the slate thatwas brought up did decay and become useless. But that was, of course, an inferior kind, quite different to what is now employed. In socomparatively short a period has everything--even the mode ofroofing--changed that the introduction of slates is still in manyplaces within the memory of man. Hilary had still a lingeringpreference for thatch; and though he could not deny the utility ofslate, his inclination was obviously in favour of straw. He assured methat good straw from a good harvest (for there was much difference init), well laid on by a good thatcher, had been known to keep out theweather for forty-five years. 

We looked into the garden at the Place, where Hilary particularlycalled my attention to the kidney-beans; for, said he, if thekidney-beans run up the sticks well, with a strong vine, then it wouldbe a capital hop-year. On the contrary, if they were weak and poor, the hops would prove a failure. Thus the one plant was an index to theother, though they might be growing a hundred miles apart, both beingparticularly sensitive to the same atmospheric influences. 

In a distant tree beyond the rickyard there was something hanging inthe branches that I could not quite make out: it was a limb of a deadhorse. A cart-horse belonging to a neighbouring farmer had met with anaccident and had to be killed, when, according to old custom, portionswere sent round to each adjacent farmstead for the dogs, which thenhad a feast. Thus, said Hilary, according to the old saw, the death ofa horse is the life of a dog. 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE WATER-MILL. FIELD NAMES. 

'Our time be a-most gone by, ' said the miller looking up from his workand laying aside the millpeck for a moment as he rubbed his eyes withhis white and greasy sleeve. From a window of the old mill byOkebourne I was gazing over the plain green with rising wheat, wherethe titlarks were singing joyously in the sunshine. A millstone hadbeen 'thrown off' on some full sacks--like cushions--and Tibbald, themiller, was dexterously pecking the grooves afresh. 

The millpeck is a little tool like a double adze, or perhaps ratherlike two chisels set in the head of a mallet. Though age was stealingupon him, Tibbald's eye and hand were still true, and his rudesculpture was executed with curious precision. The grooves, which arethe teeth of the millstone, radiate from the centre, but do notproceed direct to the edge: they slant slightly. 

'There bean't many as can do this job, ' he said, 'I can put in sixteenor twenty to the inch. These old French burrs be the best stone; theybe hard, but they be mild and takes the peck well. ' Ponderous as themillstones appear, they are capable of being set so that theirsurfaces shall grind with extreme accuracy. The nether, called the'bed stone, ' is stationary; the upper millstone, or 'runner, 'revolves, and the grain crushed between the two works out along thefurrows to the edge. 

Now and then the miller feels the grain as it emerges with his pudgythumb and finger, and knows by touch how the stones are grinding. Itis perceptibly warm at the moment it issues forth, from the friction:yet the stones must not grind too close, or they 'kill' the wheat, which should be only just cracked, so as to skin well. To attain thisend, first, the surfaces of the stones must be level, and the groovesmust be exactly right; and, secondly, the upper stone must be hung atthe exact distance above the other to the smallest fraction of aninch. The upper millstone is now sometimes balanced with lead, whichTibbald said was not the case of old. 

'We used to have a good trade at this mill, ' he continued, as heresumed his pecking; 'but our time be a-most gone by. We be too furaway up in these here Downs. There! Listen to he!' A faint hollowwhistle came up over the plain, and I saw a long white cloud of steammiles away, swiftly gliding above the trees beneath which in thecutting the train was running. 

'That be th' express. It be that there steam as have done for us. Everything got to go according to that there whistle: they sets thechurch clock by he. The big London mills as be driven by steam doesthe most of the work; and this here foreign wheat, as comes over inthe steamers, puts the market down, so as we yent got a chance to buyup a lot and keep it till the price gets better. I seed in the paperas the rate is gone down a penny: the steamers be going to ship theAmerican wheat a penny a bushel cheaper. So it bean't much good forHilary to talk about his wheat. I thenks that'll about do. '

He laid down the millpeck, and took his millstaff to prove the work hehad done. This was made of well-seasoned oak, two pieces put togetherso that they should not warp. He rubbed the edge with ruddle, and, placing the millstaff on the stone, turned it about on its shorteraxis: where the ruddle left its red mark more pecking would berequired. There was but one small spot, and this he quickly put right. Even the seasoned oak, however, is not always true, and to be certainon the point Tibbald had a millstaff prover. This is of rigid steel, and the staff is put on it; if any daylight is visible between the twothe staff is not accurate--so delicately must these great stones beadjusted for successful grinding. 

The largest of them are four feet two inches diameter; and dangerousthings they are to move, for if the men do not all heave or 'give' atthe same moment the stone may slip, and the edge will take off a rowof fingers as clean as the guillotine. Tibbald, of course, had hisjoke about that part of the machinery which is called the 'damsel. ' Hewas a righteous man enough as millers go, but your miller was always abit of a knave; nor could he forbear from boasting to me how he hadbeen half an hour too soon for Hilary last Overboro' market. 

He said the vast water-wheel was of elm, but it would not last so longup so near the springs. Upon a river or brook the wheel might endurefor thirty years, and grind corn for a generation. His millpond wasclose to the spring-head, and the spring-water ate into the wood andcaused it to decay much quicker. The spokes used to be mortised in, now they used flanges, ironwork having almost destroyed the businessof the ancient millwright. Of all manual workers, probably the oldstyle of millwright employed the greatest variety of tools, and wasthe cleverest in handling them. There seemed no end to the number ofhis chisels and augers; some of the augers of immense size. In wintertime the millwright made the millstones, for the best stones are notin one piece but composed of forty or fifty. The French burrs whichTibbald preferred come over in fragments, and these are carefullyfitted together and stuck with plaster of Paris. Such work requiredgreat nicety: the old millwright was, in fact, a kind of artist in hishandicraft. 

I could not help regretting, as Tibbald dilated on these things, thatthe village millwright no longer existed; the care, the skill, theforethought, the sense of just proportion he exhibited quite took himout of the ranks of the mere workman. He was a master of his craft, and the mind he put into it made him an artist. Tibbald went on thathe did not care for the Derby or Welsh millstones. These were in onepiece, but they were too hard for the delicate grinding necessary tomake the fine flour needed for good bread. They answered best forbarley meal. Now, the French burr was not only hard but mild, andseemed to feel the corn as it crushed it. A sack of wheat lost 4 lb. In grinding. I asked about the toll: he showed me the old measure, reckoned at the tenth of a sack; it was a square box. When the lord'stenants in the olden times were forced to have their corn ground atthe lord's mill, the toll was liable to be abused in a cruel manner;hence the universal opinion that a miller must be a knave. Even inmuch more recent times, when the labourers took part of their wages inflour, there is said to have been a great deal of sleight-of-hand inusing the toll-box, and the miller's thumb grew fat by continuallydipping into other folk's sacks. 

But Tibbald had an argument even here, for he said that men nowadaysnever grew so strong as they used to do when they brought their ownwheat to be ground at the mill, and when they made their bread andbaked it at home. His own father once carried the fattest man in theparish on his back half a mile; I forget how much he weighed exactly, but it was something enormous, and the fat man, moreover, held a 56lb. Weight in each hand. He himself remembered when Hilary used to bethe strongest man in the place; when the young men met together theycontended who should lift the heaviest weight, and he had seen Hilaryraise 5 cwt. , fair lifting, with the hands only, and without anymechanical appliance. Hilary, too, used to write his name with acarpenter's flat cedar pencil on the whitewashed ceiling of thebrewhouse, holding the while a 1/2 cwt. Of iron hung on his littlefinger. The difficulty was to get the weight up, lifting it fairlyfrom the ground; you could lift it very well half-way, but it was justwhen the arm was bent that the tug came to get it past the hip, afterwhich it would go up comparatively easily. 

Now this great strength was not the result of long and specialtraining, or, indeed, of any training at all; it came naturally fromoutdoor life, outdoor work, plain living (chiefly bacon), and goodbread baked at home. At the present time men ate the finest andwhitest of bread, but there was no good in it. Folk grew tall andbig--taller than they used to be, he thought--and they could runquick, and so forth; but there was no stamina, no power of endurance, of withstanding exposure like there was formerly. The mere measure ofa man, he was certain, had nothing to do with his strength; and hecould never understand how it was that the army folk would have menprecisely so high and so many inches round. Just then he was calledaway to a carter who had brought up his team and waggon at the door, and as he was gone some time I went up under the roof, whence therewas a beautiful view down over the plain. 

The swifts, which had but just arrived, were rushing through the skyin their headlong way; they would build presently in the roof. Themill was built at the mouth of a coombe on the verge of the Downs; thecoombe was narrow and steep, as if nature had begun a cutting with theview of tunnelling through the mass of the hills. At the upper end ofthe coombe the spring issued, and at the lower was the millpond. Thereis something peculiarly human in a mill--something that carries themind backwards into the past, the days of crossbow and lance andarmour. Possibly there was truth in Tibbald's idea that men growlarger in the present time without corresponding strength, for is itnot on record that some at least of the armour preserved incollections will not fit those who have tried it on in recent times?Yet the knight for whom it was originally made, though less in statureand size, may have had much more vigour and power of endurance. 

The ceaseless rains last year sent the farmers in some places to thelocal millers once more somewhat in the old style. Part of their wheatproved so poor that they could not sell it at market; and, rather thanwaste it, they had it ground at the village mills with the idea ofconsuming as much of the flour as possible at home. But the flour wasso bad as to be uneatable. As I parted with Tibbald that morning hewhispered to me, as he leaned over the hatch, to say a good word forhim with Hilary about the throw of oak that was going on in one partof the Chace. 'If you was to speak to he, he could speak to thesteward, and may be I could get a stick or two at a bargain'--with awink. Tibbald did a little in buying and selling timber, and, indeed, in many other things. Pleased as he was to show me the mill, and totalk about it by the hour together, the shrewd old fellow still had aneye to business. 

After a while, in walking along the footpaths of the meadows and bythe woods, a feeling grew upon me that it would be pleasant to knowsomething of their history. It was through inquiring about the age ofthe rookery that this thought took shape. No one could tell me howlong the rooks had built there, nor were there any passing allusionsin old papers to fix the date. There was no tradition of it among theoldest people; all they knew was that the rooks had always been there, and they seemed to indicate a belief that there the rooks would alwaysremain. It seemed to me, however, that the site of their city wasslowly travelling, and in a few generations might be found on theother side of the Chace. Some of the trees where the nests were mostnumerous were decaying, and several were already deserted. As thetrees died, the rooks moved to the next clump, and thus graduallyshifted their city. 

This inquiry led to further reflections about the past of the woodsand meadows. Besides the birds, the flowers, and animals that had beenthere for so many, many centuries, there were the folk in thescattered homesteads, whose ancestors might have left some record. Inthese times history is concerned only with great cities or strategicalpositions of world-wide renown; interest is concentrated on a siege ofParis or a march towards Constantinople. In days of yore battles wereoften fought in or near what seem to us mere villages; little placeswhose very names are uncertain and exact site unascertainable were thecentres of strife. Some of these places are buried under the sward ascompletely as Herculaneum under the lava. The green turf covers them, the mower passes over with his scythe and knows not of them. 

Hilary had observed in one of his meadows that the turf turned brownor burnt up in squares during hot summer weather. This he conjecturedto be caused by the shallowness of the soil over some ancientfoundations; and some years before he had had the curiosity to open ahole, and soon came upon a hidden wall. He did not excavate farther, but the old folk, when they heard of it, remembered a tradition of avillage having once existed there. At present there were no housesnear; the place, whatever it was, had disappeared. The mention of thismeadow led to some conversation about the names of the fields, whichare often very curious. 

Such names as Lea, Leaze, Croft, and so on, are readily explained; butwhat was the original meaning of The Cossicles? Then there wereZacker's Hook, the Conigers, [3] Cheesecake, Hawkes, Rials, Purley, Strongbowls, Thrupp, Laines, Sannetts, Gaston, Wexils, Wernils, Glacemere, several Hams, Haddons, and Weddingtons, Slades, and so on, and a Truelocks. These were quickly put down; scores of still moresingular names might be collected in every parish. It is the meadowsand pastures which usually bear these designations; the ploughedfields are often only known by their acreage, as the Ten Acre Piece, or the Twelve Acres. Some of them are undoubtedly the personal namesof former owners. But in others ancient customs, allusions totraditions, fragments of history, or of languages now extinct, maysurvive. 

 [3] See Notes. 

There was a meadow where deep trenches could be traced, green now, butclearly once a moat, but there was not even a tradition about it. Onthe Downs overlooking the Idovers was an earthwork or entrenchment, ofwhich no one knew anything. Hilary believed there was an old book--ahistory of Overboro' town--which might perhaps contain someinformation, but where it could be found he did not know. After someconsideration, however, he thought there might be a copy at the Crown, once an old posting-inn, at Overboro': that was about the only placewhere I should be likely to find it. So one warm summer day I walkedinto Overboro', following a path over the Downs, whose short swardaffords the best walking in the world. 

At the Crown, now no more an inn but an hotel, the archway was blockedup with two hand-trucks piled with trunks and portmanteaus, theproperty of commercial gentlemen and just about to be conveyed to thestation. What with the ostler and the 'boots' and the errand-boys, allhanging about for their fees, it was a push to enter; and the waiterswithin seemed to equally occupy the passage, fetching the dust-coatsand walking-sticks and flourishing coat-brushes. Seeing a door marked'Coffee-room, ' I took refuge, and having ordered luncheon began toconsider how I should open my subject with the landlord, who wasclearly as much up to the requirements of modern life as if his househad been by a London terminus. Time-tables in gilt-stamped coversstrewed the tables; wine lists stood on edge; a card of the localomnibus to the station was stuck up where all could see it; the dailypapers hung over the arm of a cosy chair; the furniture was new; thewhole place, it must be owned, extremely comfortable and the servicegood. 

But it was town and not country--to-day and not the olden time; and Idid not feel courage enough to ask for the book. I believe I shouldhave left the place without mentioning it, but, fortunately lookinground the room while the lunch was prepared, I found it in thebookcase, where there was a strange mixture of the modern and antique. I took down the history from between Rich's thin grey 'Ruins ofBabylon' and a yellow-bound railway novel. 

Towards the close of the eighteenth century a learned gentleman hadtaken much pains to gather together this account of the town. He beganwith the story of Brutus, and showed that one of the monarchsdescended from the illustrious Trojan founded a city here. Some fossilshells, indeed, that had been dug up furnished him with conclusiveproof that the Deluge had not left the site uncovered, since no howelse could they have got there: an argument commonly accepted in hisday. Thus he commenced, like the monks themselves, with the beginningof the world; but then came a wide gap down to Domesday Book. Thehides and yardlands held by the conquerors--how much was in demesne, how many acres were wood and how many meadow--the number of servi, andwhat the mill paid were duly translated and recorded. 

The descent of the manors through the monasteries and the persons whopurchased them at the Dissolution filled several pages, and wassupplemented with a charter recognising rights of infang and outfang, assize of bread and ale, and so forth. Finally, there was a list ofthe mayors, which some one had carried on in manuscript on a fly-leafto within ten years of date. There was an air of precision in theexact sentences, and the writer garnished his tale with frequentquotations from Latin writers. In the midst was a wood-cut of a planthaving no sort of relevancy to the subject-matter, but for which hereturned thanks for the loan of the block. 

But he had totally omitted his own times. These quotations, theselists and charters, the extracts from Domesday, read dry andformal--curious, and yet not interesting. Had he described the squiresand yeomen, the townspeople of his own day, their lives and manner ofthinking, how invaluable and pleasing his work would have been!

Hilary said that in these little country towns years ago people had tobe very careful how they acted, lest they should offend some localmagnate. He remembered a tradesman telling him how once he had gotinto great disgrace for putting a new knocker on his private sidedoor, without first asking permission and sending round to obtain theopinion of an old gentleman. This person had nothing whatever to dowith the property, but lived retired and ruled his neighbours with arod of iron. The old knocker was quite worn out, but the new one hadscarcely been fastened on when the unfortunate owner was summoned tothe presence of the irate old gentleman, who demanded with great wrathwhat on earth he meant by setting himself up above his station in thisway. It was only by a humble answer, and by begging the old gentlemanto walk down and look at the discarded knocker, promising that itshould be replaced if he thought proper, that he could be appeased. Aman then hardly dared appear in a new hat without first suggesting theidea to his social superior. 

CHAPTER X. 

THE COOMBE-BOTTOM. CONCLUSION. 

'There is "two-o'clock bush, "' said Cicely, pointing to a largehawthorn; 'the shepherds look from the corner of the entrenchment, andif the sun is over that bush they know it is two o'clock. ' She wasdriving me in the pony-trap over the Downs, and we were going to callon Mrs. Luckett's brother, who had a farm among the hills. He had notbeen down to Lucketts' Place for more than twelve months, and Cicelywas resolved to make him promise to come. Though they may be inreality much attached and affectionate, country folk are apt toneglect even their nearest and dearest. The visit is put off frommonth to month; then comes the harvest, and nothing else can bethought of; and the longer the lapse the more difficult is the remedy. The footpath of friendship, says the ancient British triad, if notfrequently travelled becomes overgrown with briars. 

Those who live by the land forget the passage of the years. A year isbut a harvest. After the ploughing and sowing and cleaning, thereaping and thatching and threshing, what is there left of thetwelvemonth? It has gone like a day. Thus it is that a farmer talks oftwenty years since as if it was only last week, and seems unable tograsp the flight of time till it is marked and emphasised by someexceptional occurrence. Cicely meant to wake her uncle from thisslumber. 

We started early on a beautiful July morning--partly to avoid theheat, and partly because Cicely wished to be away when young Aaronshortened the tails of the puppies in the rickyard. (This he did inthe old-fashioned way, with his teeth. ) Besides we thought that, if wewaited till later, Uncle Bennet might be gone to market at Overboro'. We passed several farmers leaning or sitting on the stiles by theroad, watching for a friend to come along and give them a lift intotown. Some of them had waited like this every market morning foryears. There were fewer on the road than usual, it being near harvest, when many do not so much care to leave home. 

Upon reaching the foot of the Downs, Cicely left the highway andentered a narrow lane without hedges, but worn low between banks ofchalk or white rubble. The track was cut up with ruts so deep that thebed of the pony-trap seemed almost to touch the ground. As we wentrather slowly along this awkward place we could see the wild thymegrowing on the bank at the side. Presently we got on the slope of thehill, and at the summit passed the entrenchment and the shepherds'timepiece. Thence our track ran along the ridge, on the short sweetturf, where there were few or no ruts, and these easily avoided onthat broad open ground. The quick pony now put out his speed, and weraced along as smoothly as if the wheels were running on a carpet. Farbelow, to the right, stretched wheatfield after wheatfield in a plainbetween two ranges of the hills. Over the opposite slope, a mile away, came the shadows of the clouds--then down along the corn towards us. Stonechats started from the flints and low bushes as we went by; anold crow--it is always an old crow--rose hastily from behind a fenceof withered thorn; and a magpie fluttered down the hill to the fieldsbeneath, where was a flock of sheep. The breeze at this height madethe sunshine pleasant. 

Cicely said that once some snow lingered in the fosse of theentrenchment we had left behind till the haymaking. There was asnowstorm late in the spring, and a drift was formed in a hollow atthe bottom of the fosse. The weather continued chilly (sometimes evenin June it is chilly, and the flowers seem out of harmony with thetemperature), and this drift, though of course it was reduced, did notmelt but became consolidated like ice: a part still remained when thehaymaking commenced. The pony now slackened his pace at a sharpascent, and as he walked up we could hear the short song of thegrasshoppers. There was a fir copse at the summit through which thetrack went; by the gateway as we entered there was a convolvulus out. Cicely regretted to see this sign that the sun had reached hisgreatest height: the tide of summer was full. Beyond the copse wedescended by a deep-worn track into a 'coombe-bottom, ' or valley, where were some cottages. 

Cicely, who knew some of the old people, thought she would call, though most probably they would be away. We stopped at a garden-gate:it was open, but there was no one about. Cicely lifted the latch ofthe door to step in, country fashion, but it was locked; and, hearingthe noise, a cat came mewing round the corner. As if they had startedout of the ground, a brown-faced boy and a thin girl suddenlyappeared, having come through the hedge. 

'Thaay be up to barken' (rickyard), said the boy: so we went on to thenext door. It was locked too, but the key was in the lock outside. Cicely said that was a signal to callers that the wife had only goneout for a few minutes and would return soon. The children had followedus. 

'Where is she?' asked Cicely. 

'Hur be gone to dipping-place, ' replied the boy. We went to a thirddoor, and immediately he cried out, 'Thuck's our feyther's: the kay'sin the thatch. ' We looked and could see the handle of the key stickingout of the eave over the door. 

'Where are they all?' I said. 

'Aw, Bill's in the clauver; and Joe--he's in th' turmuts; and Jack beat public, a' spose; and Bob's wi' the osses; and----'

'They will be home to luncheon?' said Cicely. 

'Aw, no um wunt; they wunt be whoam afore night; thaay got thurnuncheon wi' um. '

'Is there no one at home in all the place?' I inquired. 

'Mebbe Farmer Bennet. Thur beant nobody in these yer housen. '

So we went on to Uncle Bennet's, whose house was hidden by a clump ofelms farther down the coombe. There were cottagers in this lonely hillhamlet, not only old folk but young persons, who had never seen atrain. They had not had the enterprise or curiosity to walk intoOverboro' for the purpose. Some of the folk ate snails, the commonbrown shell-snail found in the hedges. It has been observed thatchildren who eat snails are often remarkably plump. The method ofcooking is to place the snail in its shell on the bar of a grate, likea chestnut. And well-educated people have been known, even in thesedays, to use the snail as an external medicine for weakly children:rubbed into the back or limb, the substance of the snail is believedto possess strengthening virtues. [4]

 [4] See Notes. 

We found Uncle Bennet just taking his lunch in the stone-flaggedsitting-room, which, however, had a square of cocoa-nut matting. Hewas getting on in years, but very active. He welcomed us warmly: stillI thought I detected some uneasiness in his manner. His consciencewarned him that Cicely was going to attack him for his remissness; andhow was he to defend himself?

Without any preliminary, she at once demanded why he had not come downto see them. 

'Mary, ' said he, calling the servant, as if he did not hear her, 'Someale, and the ginger wine, and the grey-beard--mebbe you'd like a dropa' shart'--to me; but I declined. She repeated her question, but UncleBennet was looking towards me. 

'The wuts be very forrard, ' said he, 'I got some a-most ready to cut. '

'Do you hear?' cried Cicely, angrily. 

'Niece, ' replied the farmer, turning to her, 'there's them summerapples as you used to like, there be some ready; will 'ee have one?'

'I don't want your apples; why didn't you come down?'

'Aw; that's what you be a-talking about. '

'Yes, that's it. '

'The turmots wants some rain terrable bad' (to me)--'you med see thefly a-hopping about 'em. '

'I hope they will spoil your turnips, ' said Cicely; 'you are a veryrude man not to answer a lady when she speaks to you. '

'You be a-coming on nicely, Cissy, ' said he. 'Have 'ee got are agage-ring yet?'

'How dare you!' (blushing). 'Tell me instantly why have you not beento see us? You know how angry it makes me. '

'Well, I was a-coming, ' deliberately. 

'When were you coming?'

'Well, I got to see a man down your way, Cissy; a' owes me for a loada' straw. '

'Then why don't you come down and get the money?'

'I telled 'ee I was a-coming. He wants some of our sheep to feed off ameadow; s'pose I must see about it'--with a sigh, as if the idea of adecision was insupportable. 

'Why didn't you come before?'

'Aw, I don't seem to have no time'--farmers having more time thananybody else. 

'You could have come in June. '

'Bless 'ee, your feyther's got the hay about; a' don't want nostrangers bothering. '

'As if you were a stranger! Well, why didn't you come in May?'

'Lor bless 'ee, my dear. '

'In April?'

'Us was main busy a-hoeing. '

'In March?'

'I had the rheumatism bad in March. '

'Well, then, ' concluded Cicely, 'now just change your coat and cometo-day. Jump up in the pony-trap--we will make room. '

'To-day!' in hopeless bewilderment, his breath quite taken away at theidea of such sudden action. 'Couldn't do't--couldn't do't. Got to godown to Thirty Acre Corner: got to get out the reaping machine--a'wants oiling, a' reckon; got some new hurdles coming; 'spects a chapto call about them lambs;' a farmer can always find a score of reasonsfor doing nothing. 

'All rubbish!' cried Cicely, smiling. 

'Nieces be main peart now-a-days, ' said he, shutting one eye andkeeping it closed, as much as to say--I won't be driven. Then to me, 'There won't be many at market to-day. '

'I am hungry, ' said Cicely softly; 'I should like some bread andhoney. '

'Aw; should 'ee?' in gentler tones; 'I'll get 'ee some: will'ee haveit in th' comb? I got a bit left. '

She knew his pride in his bees and his honey; hill farmers still keeplarge stocks. He brought her a slice of home-baked bread and a pieceof comb. She took the comb in her white fingers, and pressed theliquid gold from the cells; the luscious sweetness gathered from athousand flowers making her lips still sweeter. Uncle Bennet offeredme a jar full to the brim: 'Dip your vinger in, ' said he. 

'Why is the honey of the hills so much nicer?' asked Cicely, wellknowing, but drawing him on. 

'It be th' clover and th' thyme, and summat in the air. There bean'tno hedges for um to fly up against, and so um carries home a biggerload. '

'How many hives have you?' I inquired. 

'Let's see'--he counted them up, touching a finger for eachtwenty--'There be three score and sixteen; I have a' had six scoreyears ago, but folk don't care for honey now sugar be so cheap. '

'Let us go and see them, ' said Cicely. We went out and looked at thehives; they were all in a row, each protected by large 'pan-sherds'from heavy rain, and placed along beneath the wall of the garden, which sheltered them on one side. Uncle Bennet chatted pleasantlyabout his bees for an hour, and would, I believe, have gossiped allday, notwithstanding that he had so little time for anything. Nothingmore was said about the delayed visit, but just as we were on thepoint of departure, and Cicely had already taken the reins, he said toher, as if it were an afterthought, 'Tell your mother, I s'pose I mustlook down that way next week. '

We passed swiftly through the little hamlet; the children had gatheredby a gateway to watch us. Though so far from the world, they were notaltogether without a spice of the impudence of the city arab. A talland portly gentleman from town once chanced to visit this 'coombe-bottom'on business, and strolled down the 'street' in all the glory ofshining boots, large gold watch-chain, black coat and high hat, allthe pomp of Regent-street; doubtless imagining that his grandeurastonished the rustics. A brown young rascal, however, looking himup--he was a tall man--with an air of intelligent criticism, audiblyremarked, 'Hum! He be very well up to his ankles--and then a' fallsoff!'

That evening was one of the most beautiful I remember. We all sat inthe garden at Lucketts' Place till ten o'clock; it was still light andit seemed impossible to go indoors. There was a seat under a sycamoretree with honeysuckle climbing over the bars of the back; the spot wasnear the orchard, but on slightly higher ground. From our feet themeadow sloped down to the distant brook, the murmur of whose stream asit fell over a bay could be just heard. Northwards the stars werepale, the sun seems so little below the horizon there that the glow ofthe sunset and the glow of the dawn nearly meet. But southwards shonethe dull red star of summer--Antares, seen while the wheat ripens andthe ruddy and golden tints come upon the fruits. Then nightlydescribing a low curve he looks down upon the white shimmering corn, and carries the mind away to the burning sands and palms of the farsouth. In the light and colour and brilliance of an English summer wesometimes seem very near those tropical lands. 

So still was it that we heard an apple fall in the orchard, thud onthe sward, blighted perhaps and ripe before its time. Under the treesas the months went on there would rise heaps of the windfallscollected there to wait for the cider-mill. The mill was the propertyof two or three of the village folk, a small band of adventurers nowgrown old, who every autumn went round from farm to farm grinding theproduce of the various orchards. They sometimes poured a quantity ofthe acid juice into the mill to sharpen it, as cutting a lemon willsharpen a knife. The great press, with its unwieldy screw and levers, squeezed the liquor from the cut-up apples in the horse-hair bags: acumbersome apparatus, but not without interest; for surely so rude anengine must date back far in the past. The old fellows who brought itand put it up with slow deliberative motions were far, far past thejoy with which all the children about the farm hailed its arrival. With grave faces and indifferent manner they ground the apples, anddeparted as slowly and deliberately as they came; verily men of theautumn, harbingers of the fall of the year. 

As I dreamed with the honeysuckle over my shoulder, and Antaressouthwards, Hilary talked at intervals about his wheat as usual andthe weather, but I only caught fragments of it. All the signs werepropitious, and as it had been a fine harvest under similar conditionsbefore, people said it would be fine this time. But, unlike the law, the weather acknowledged no precedent, and nobody could tell, thoughfolk now thought they knew everything. How all things had changedsince the Queen ascended the throne! Not long since Hilary was talkingwith a labourer, an elderly man, who went to the feast in Overboro'town on the day of the coronation. The feast was held in themarket-place, and the puddings, said the old fellow regretfully, wereso big they were brought in on hand-barrows. 

It was difficult since he himself remembered even to learn the stateof the markets. So few newspapers came into country places that beforeservice on Sundays the farmers gathered round anybody in thechurchyard who was known to take in a paper, to get particulars fromthis fortunate individual. Letters rarely came to the farmhouse doorthen. The old postman made a very good thing of his office--peoplewere so eager for news, and it was easy to take a magpie glance at anewspaper. So he called at the butcher's before he started out, and inexchange for a peep at the paper got a little bit of griskin, or achop, and at the farmhouses as he passed they gave him a few eggs, andat the inns a drop of gin. Thus a dozen at least read scraps before itreached the rightful owner. 

If anything very extraordinary had happened he would shout it out ashe went through the hamlet. Hilary said he well remembered being up onthe roof of the house one morning, mending the thatch, when suddenly avoice--it was the postman's--cried from the road, 'Royal Exchangeburned down!' In this way news got about before the present facilitieswere afforded. But some of the old folk still regretted the change andbelieved that we should some day be punished for our worship of steam. Steam had brought us to rely on foreign countries for our corn, and aday would come when through a war, or a failure of the crops there, the vast population of this country would be in danger of famine. But'old folk' are prone to prophesy disaster and failure of all kinds. 

Mrs. Luckett chimed in here, and said that modern ways were not allimprovements, the girls now were so fond of gadding about. This was ahint for Cicely, who loved a change, and yet was deeply attached tothe old home. She rose at this, doubtless pouting, but it was toodusky to see, and went indoors, and presently from the open windowcame the notes of her piano. As she played I dreamed again, tillpresently Mrs. Luckett began to argue with Hilary that the shrubsabout the garden ought to be cut and trimmed. Hilary said he liked tosee the shrubs and the trees growing freely; he objected to cut andtrim them. 'For, ' said he, 'God made nothing tidy. ' Just then Cicelycalled us to supper. 

NOTES. 

The following interesting correspondence has been received. 

MAGPIE OMENS. _Page 153. _--In reference to the superstition that onemagpie is good luck, but two sorrow, 'R. F. ' writes from Wiesbaden:--'Inthe north of England the contrary belief holds good, witness thefollowing saw which I heard many years ago in the county of Durham:--

 "One for sorrow, two for mirth; Three a marriage, four a birth; Five for heaven, six for hell, Seven--the devil's own sel!"

As to seventeen, which number I once saw together, Mrs. Luckett'sexclamation "Goodness! something awful might happen" might have beenappropriate; only nothing dreadful did occur. '

CART-HORSE ORNAMENTS. _Page 159. _--As to the history of thecrescent-shaped ornaments on carthorses, 'J. D. ' writes from Dover:'Anyone who has lived in Spanish countries must be struck on going toEast Kent by the gay trappings of the farmers' horses on gala days, inwhich the national colours of Spain, scarlet and orange yellow, andthe "glittering brazen" ornament of the crescent and the cross, sogenerally prevail. Their history must date from the introduction ofthe Flemish breed of horses to this country, showing that as the Moorscarried the crescent to Spain, so the Spaniards took it to Flanders, and the Flemings here, whence it has been adopted pretty generally bythe farmers of England. '

NAMES OF FIELDS. _Page 176. _--'The Conigers is evidently the same asConingar, a word sometimes occurring in Scottish local nomenclature, and which meant a rabbit-warren--Coniger, Coney-garth. I know twoConingars in Aberdeenshire, but the meaning of the word is as muchforgotten there also. --H. W. L. '

MEDICINAL USE OF SNAILS. _Page 189. _--In Dorset, writes 'S. C. S. S. , 'an extract of snails for external use is still sometimes prepared, and, mixed with rum, is rubbed into weak backs, or legs, especially ofchildren. 

LONDON: PRINTED BYSPOTTISWOODE AND CO. , NEW STREET SQUAREAND PARLIAMENT STREET