In the West Country

It is now some years since, through the giving way of the bank of one of the moorland rivers, a large part of the low-lying land in the heart of Somersetshire was under water all through the autumn. Many tenants of cottages on the moor were, as they would put it, "drownded out," and there were outlying villages that for a long while could only be reached by means of boats. During a recent autumn another wide area in the same county was flooded. Frost set in while a vast tract of land was still inundated. Miles of flooded marshland were entirely frozen over, and many cottages, after standing in the water for months past, were surrounded by the ice. So sharp was the cold that, on the second day of the frost, the fortunate few who were able to avail themselves of the opportunity had a perfect skating-ground, which must have measured thousands of acres.

A heavy snowfall, however, has changed the face of things altogether. Some of the moor men, whose ordinary avocations have long been at a standstill, have cleared a pretty fair piece of ice. But the rest is covered with snow. Much of it has sunk and broken, owing to the draining away of the water from beneath it; so that, vast as is still the frozen area, comparatively little of it is good enough to satisfy a fastidious performer.

But it is a wonderful landscape that, on every side of the little house which skaters on this part of the marshes use as their headquarters, lies glistening in the sunshine. A few old alder trees and storm-beaten Scotch firs shelter the cottage a little from the wind. And its all too scanty stacks and its picturesque sheds and outbuildings, whose roof of tiles are weathered to every imaginable shade of red and brown, help to give an air of warmth and comfort. A primitive place. A place such as might have given shelter to King Alfred before that desperate fight yonder on the hills of Ethandune. The master of the house is a neatherd too, as it happens, and his heifers are at this moment all huddled in the byres about the cottage, only too glad to make the acquaintance of a sympathetic stranger. There is no entrance at the front. The frozen ground has "lifted" and has jammed the door. You must make your way in through the hospitable-looking brick-floored kitchen at the back.

Before the frost began the water was over the garden, and even on the cottage floor. And now, though the house is clear, the ice stretches away almost from the threshold, as far as the eye can see over the level country. It would be hard to picture a scene more absolutely desolate. On the skyline to the southward, just seen through the wintry haze, is a long line of low bluehills, with patches of snow on them dimly showing. Over a dark belt of fir trees to the eastward rises the Tor of Glastonbury, snow covered, too, for once. And right to the bases of the hills, over field after field, stretches for miles the great white plain, broken only by lines of pollard willows, by tall aspens and clumps of alder; with patches of furze that look strangely out of place rising up through the ice, with here and there a gate, half-hidden, with haystacks standing forlorn upon the wintry level, and, sadder still, with cottages that, long since rendered uninhabitable by the water, are now completely surrounded by the ice.

In that cottage, some hundred yards farther on, whose walls have settled so much in the soft peat that there is not a straight line in all its primitive architecture, the water is still nine inches deep in all the rooms. The tenant of it is that moor man standing yonder, lending a helping hand to the skaters preparing for the ice. A picturesque figure, whose old brown coat, with its endless varieties of shade would delight the soul of an artist. You can understand why he wears boots up to his knees when you learn that every day, from the beginning of December until a fortnight since, he waded to his door through more than a foot of water. He is better off since the frost, for now he can slide in.

A characteristic touch about these cottages is the store of winter fuel, the stacks of peat heaped against the wall. Almost more characteristic still is the quaintly-shaped boat, flat-bottomed, sharp at both ends, that you see in so many gardens; for not only are floods here far too common, but the innumerable ditches make convenient waterways for bringing home grass or peat.

A strange silence broods over the landscape. No birds are visible save the few that hang about the outbuildings. The flocks of gulls and the few ducks that were here before the floods were frozen have all disappeared. Multitudes of skylarks, too, passed over when the snow set in, but they soon vanished. This was once a great country for wild-duck. Twenty years ago there were four decoys almost in sight from this cottage. Now they are all drained—"let off" as the moor folk put it. The only sound besides the low lament of the wind among the alders, the plaintive protests of the heifers in the byres, and the laughter and voices and occasional clink of steel where the skaters are preparing for work, is a strange, hollow, booming sound under the ice, or the sharper crash when it gives way because the water has gone from under it. It is strange to see great sheets of ice caught in the bushes or among the alder stems, feet above the general level.

It is a wintry wind that sweeps over the frozen marshes. But here, in this sunny corner, with a heap of dry peats to sit on, in the shelter of a stable on whose door is nailed a lucky horseshoe, there is the warmth of very summer.

But hark, the ring of skates upon the ice! And see, the skaters are leaving their little camping ground just outside the garden. Already there are moving figures far out on the frozen meadows. As you watch them start, some bold and fearless, as to the manner born, some doubtful and hesitating, and hardly venturing to lift their feet, you might almost read something of their story in their very movements.

That tall figure yonder, so absolutely at home upon his skates, had more time in one long Canadian winter to learn the art he practises so well than most of us get in a lifetime. And to one who, in a forced march across the Dominion in the dead of winter, has tried in vain to sleep on the snow with the thermometer forty degrees below zero, and who has put down his boiling can of grog to take it up next minute frozen solid, cold like this is nothing. And you might have known that the stalwart skater further out, whose wife is the most graceful among many graceful figures in the moving throng, gained his first experiences on skates in latitudes where the frost sometimes holds unbroken for twelve long dreary weeks.

The frozen-out moor men are ready enough to volunteer assistance. And as the day wears on it is really marvellous to see with what dexterity they carry cups of tea to the skaters; while their dogs, with an eye to biscuits, make friends with each little group in turn. A kindly race, these Somerset folks, sunny of face, and pleasant of speech, in spite of the hard times, and the enforced idleness and the bitter weather. But they hold strong views as to the incapacity of engineers who fail to guard against such floods as this. "What be the use," said one, "of they Drainage Commissioners, what charges we two and eightpence poundage for keeping the water off of we? This here flood have lasted since before Christmas. Here be the rent going on all the time, and the land won't be no use till May."

Pleasant it is to watch from this sheltered corner the evolutions of the skaters. The wind that blows so keen over the miles of frozen marshland, and that lends a heightened colour to their glowing faces, cannot reach you here. Pleasant, too, is the scent of the hay and the breath of cattle from the byres. But pleasanter still is the ingle nook within the cottage, in a tiny room, so low that the beam across its ceiling is a trap for even the shortest of the group on the old settle, by the fragrant fire of peat. By such a fire it was that Alfred sat. Yet there is a long gap between the half-shaped bow of the old story and the gun, ancient as it is, hanging yonder on the wall; and if there are cakes about this hearth, you will not hear the tall, blue-eyed, winsome damsel who dispenses them

as the neatherd's wife, a thousand years since, scolded the Royal fugitive in these very marshes.

On the edge of a broad valley in the Mendips, on the gentle slope of a line of low green hills, there stands a quiet hamlet, almost hidden now among its clustering trees. At the foot of the slope, standing some way back from the village street, is a white-walled cottage, whose lawns and garden grounds only a slender fence divides from the fields that fringe the village.

On one side of the garden runs a narrow lane, losing itself presently in the meadows, a quieter backwater of the quiet village life, in whose old walls and deep-browed hedgerows many birds find lodging. On the other side, beyond a row of picturesque old sheds and ruinous old buildings, with brown roofs of thatch and crowns of thick-growing ivy, stretch the bird-haunted aisles of an orchard. The nuthatches love its cavernous trees. Its shades are musical, long before the dawn, with the songs of thrush and blackbird, of redstart and willow-wren. Among the old buildings tits and wagtails and robins hide their nests in crannies of the crumbling masonry.

But to the garden itself, islanded by lanes and meadows, with its trees and shrubs, its broad thickets of laurel and rhododendron and arbutus, the birds come as to a Camp of Refuge. In the tall evergreen above the gate, wreathed in a great bower of ivy, blackbirds even now are feeding their young. There are nests in the lilacs, in the laurels, in the hedges, in the trellis on the wall.

Through the open windows the warm air brings all pleasant scents and sounds. The low of cattle, on distant farms, the mellow chiming of the old church bells, the rich strains of thrush and blackbird, the sweet song of the swallow, clink of oxeye, call of cuckoo, jay's harsh cry, and wood-pecker's light-hearted laughter, mingle with the perfume of the roses and the woodruff. The swallows that sing on the brown gable of the barn beyond the precincts may have their nests plundered by prowling schoolboys. The hollow trees in the orchard, the chinks in the old wall of the lane, are not wholly safe from the village birds'-nester. But here is sanctuary inviolate, from which no bird was ever driven.

Year after year the fly-catchers repair their nest in the plum tree trained against the wall. No hand disturbs the martins that build under the broad eaves. No sweet singer ever here paid with his life the penalty of his taste for cherries.

Here no blackbird ever suffered for his raids upon the strawberry beds. This garden is to him the garden of the laureate:

Here the bullfinch may pillage at his will. The only unpardonable crime that even the house-sparrow can commit is to take wrongful possession of a martin's nest. Even then the culprit has never suffered anything but reproaches. Even when, with its own untidy heap of hay and feathers, it has blocked up a rain-water pipe, the disaster that it caused was not held warrant for eviction. And never surely were there sparrows quite so bright of plumage—so glossy their sleek heads, so rich their chestnut feathers, so stainless the white bars across their wings.

Here, too, in the hard winter weather, the birds have learnt by long experience to come as for corn in Egypt. The missel-thrush and the nuthatch, the marsh-tit and the oxeye, know well the brilliant berries they may plunder at their will from the tall Irish yew before the window. In the very bearing of the birds that haunt the garden, of the robin and the sparrow and the song-thrush, that in hard times come to the very window to be fed, with firm faith in their gentle almoners, you may read the confidence born of long experience, the result of years of welcome and protection.

The fly-catcher brooding on her nest, her glossy head just showing over the rim of the little cradle she has slung between the plum-tree and the wall, watches your approach without the least alarm. And as you stroll between the borders, bright with thickets of peonies, covered with great rose-like blooms, with their flags and pansies and pale yellow poppies, and with all their hundred flowers, she will flicker lightly by to her favourite resting-place on the rose-hung arch over the garden path, or to the handle of the walking-stick set upright in the grass for her sovereign pleasure, or to the leafless laurel bough that, while shears and pruning-knife are merciless to every other dead wood in the garden, is spared for her sake alone.

Watch her for a moment. See how she turns her head this way and that, keeping a sharp look-out for passing fly or beetle. See how suddenly she darts from her watch tower, how she hovers for a moment in the air, with faint click of her sharp bill, flying lightly back, perhaps beating her prey against the bough a time or two before she swallows it. There is a saying here that fortune hangs on giving shelter to the flycatcher:

But there is no thought of fortune, good or ill, mingled with the kindly care that has made for so many years a sanctuary of this quiet spot. The very cat seems to have learnt that—under the eyes of the family at least—there is close time here, all the year round, for every bird that flies.

When Jock is lying at the door, stretched out at length in the sunshine, you may see a thrush alight within a yard of him, the picture of righteous indignation, feathers ruffled, wings adroop, and storm and scold and flutter and gesticulate; while he, his conscience pricked perhaps—who knows?—by the remembrance of an early breakfast some fine morning among the lilac bushes, when that brood of young thrushes disappeared so strangely, blinks with affected sleepiness at his fierce little accuser. She has even been seen to perch upon his back, when he, as if remembering some previous engagement, stretched himself, and yawned, and meekly walked away.

At the far end of the lawn, in a nook between the meeting lines of hedge-row, stand four sheltering elms, joining their heads in a green canopy, cool and restful. From the seat beneath them you look out over a broad meadow to the misty hills. The long grass is bright with myriad flowers, with lotus and hawkweed, and with yellow crowns of dandelion, whose silvery parachutes now and then sail over, sinking slowly down the summer air. Somewhere in the grass, that in a few short weeks will fill the house with the sweet incense of the hay, a corncrake is calling. It is a strange note, harsh and unmusical always; heard at night, sometimes irritating beyond words to paint; yet here, and now, a pleasant country sound.

You may watch the shrike yonder, perched motionless on his favourite hawthorn, in whose shadow his mate is doubtless already brooding on her eggs. You may listen to the goldfinch singing in the green mist of meeting branches overhead; see the grey cuckoo alight on the topmost crest of the great elm that towers above the meadow; watch the busy starlings as they pass and repass with hurried flight. And, as through the great masses of lilac, now beginning to abate their rare perfume, you catch glimpses of hills and meadows, of the white houses of the village, with its orchards and its elms, and, crowning these, the grey tower of the church, looking down like a watchful sentinel on the hamlet lying at its feet, you feel it was to no fairer spot than this that the poet called his friend, when he sang:

The whirr of the iron mower has ceased at length. Hour after hour the clashing blades swept in still narrowing circles round and round the spacious meadow. Now the last swath has fallen. Now in the centre of the field the machine stands silent; the tired horses taking toll of the sweet grass that is strewn about their feet.

The men lie motionless, their sunburned faces buried in the fragrant coolness. A few short hours ago this broad field was a sea of nodding grasses, whose tasselled points lent soft and changing tints of purple to the long waves that betrayed the light movements of the air. Sheets of great moon-daisies whitened it. Here it was golden with dyer's weed and lingering buttercups; and there it was crimson with fiery touches of red sorrel. Under the hot noonday sun each waft of air that stirred across it was fragrant with mingled perfumes, of the scent of hawkweed and lotus and sweet clover blooms. Its cool depths were stirred by honey-hunting bees. Wandering butterflies floated over it. Burnet moths in black and crimson sailed across it on their silken wings. Now the close shaven sward is strewn with drying grass and fading flowers. Bee nor butterfly will visit it more. To-morrow night not a touch of colour will remain of all its mingled beauty, ruined now past all hope; not a petal of its oxeye daisies, not a hawkweed unwithered, not a lingering clover bloom.

The hour is late. Along the low hills that bound the valley hangs the haze of sunset. There is a faint flush of rose colour on the soft clouds that drift slowly overhead. The air is still filled with fragrance. Instead of the sweet incense of the clover, there is the scent of new-mown hay.

For the breath of the lost flowers of the meadow there are all the perfumes of the one garden that gives upon the field—of roses all in bloom on arch and trellis, of clumps of tall sweet peas, white and red and rich imperial purple, of the delicate wild pinks, rooted at will in the old garden wall. And, although the last blossom has faded from the hawthorns round the meadow, slowly, and as with reluctance, delicate dog-roses are scattered broadcast all along the hedge-rows, and the woodbine sprays are rich already with pale sweet clusters.

This is a flowery haytime. Surely there was never more lavish wealth of roses on the hedges, nor can one even fancy broader sheets of oxeye daisies in the mowing grass.

Along the hedges the machine has left a fringe of tall grasses still unmown. And this green jungle, and the broad thickets behind it, are all astir with birds, some of them gaining now their first experiences of the great green world—a world of warmth and beauty, such as rarely, even in the noon of summer, greets the young children of the air. Linnets and finches, thrushes and blackbirds, and a host of other wingèd toilers of the field, are busy among the fallen swaths—not plundering the seeds, but seeking treasure-trove of slugs and wire-worms, and all the myriad creatures whose haunts the fall of the grass forest has laid bare.

Here forages a troop of starlings; the old birds in dark and glossy plumage, the young brood in sober, unpretending brown. Now a little cloud of martins wheel over the meadow, fluttering down to hover above the grass with soft, sweet notes. Now a singing swallow floats along. And now on dark wings a troop of swifts sail swarming down the field—labourers in man's service one and all.

On the end of a dead ivy branch that stands out of the garden hedge sits a solitary flycatcher; a small grey figure that, in her shape and attitude, is like no other bird that haunts the precincts. She is silent for the most part, only uttering now and then a weak, half querulous note, that is answered by notes weaker and more querulous from the heart of the thick laurel near. Again and again she takes short flights into the air across the garden, and even a dozen yards or more out over the grass, fluttering in the air a moment, and then lightly flitting back to her perch on the dead ivy stem, or to the rail that parts the garden from the meadow.

In a plum tree on the cottage wall, half hidden among clustering roses, is the empty nest from which the grey youngsters hiding now among the bushes have but just spread wings to fly. For once they tried their powers too soon. They ventured over the edge of their small nursery on wings not yet strong enough for flight, and they were found one morning on the ground among the stocks and poppies and sweet-williams underneath the nest, while the anxious parents, with plaintive cries, fluttered over them with vain attempts at rescue.

The fall had been fatal to one of the little aeronauts, but three were rescued, and, in a small basket filled with hay, were slung close up under the deserted nest. They made no effort to get back to their old quarters, but sat content on the edge of the basket, three little odd owl-like figures; while the old birds, their minds at rest again, foraged for them all day, from dawn till dark, chasing moths and flies along the garden paths, in vain attempts to satisfy their insatiable needs.

Under the eaves above the flycatcher's tree there is a martin's nest. At least, martins built it, but there was a dispute this year about the tenancy. It is not a new nest. It is in fact a tenement of many years' standing. And while two rival couples of martins were still discussing the question of proprietorship, a pair of prowling house sparrows stepped in and took possession. Perhaps they were the arbitrators—who knows?

And now these house sparrows, bent on fitting a warmer lining to their stolen habitation, cast covetous glances on the young flycatchers' basket, and when the parent birds were away—sometimes even under their very eyes—the unscrupulous brigands carried off the hay by handsful.

Fine fellows, these country sparrows: so very different from their grimy, scurrilous, soot-stained cousins of the city streets, with even a note of music on their ready tongues, and with plumage of such pure white and velvety black, of such rich warm tones of chestnut, that you would say they were among the handsomest of birds, might perhaps even go the length of wondering what strange species they might be.

And now the men, rising reluctantly from their lair among the grass, unship the long blades of the machine. It goes slowly jingling up the field, and through the gate at the far end, ready for more mowing on the morrow.

The sun low down in the west, showing for a brief space through the trees his face of fiery gold barred with the dark branches, throws far across the grass the shadows of a group of tall elms out in the meadow, whose green heads tower a hundred feet into the clear, pale blue. Motionless they stand, or seem to stand. The light wafts of scented air may flutter the leaves upon their lofty crests, but have no power to sway their giant branches. From far up among their green crown of foliage floats a goldfinch's song—a pleasant sound, a note of summer and green fields and open country. Pleasant, too, is the slow clink of a whetted scythe, sounding faintly from a distant meadow, where some tired haymaker, perhaps for the last time in the long summer day, is putting a better edge upon his worn old blade.

Along the hedge yonder a man is finishing off the ragged edges the machine has left, and the swish, swish of the grass that falls before his sweeping strokes has almost as sweet a sound to-night as the vesper of the song-thrush over there, high up among the branches of a hedgerow elm.

The gentle nurse of the foundling flycatchers is moving slowly across the meadow, the light of sunset on her white dress, sweet face, and graceful figure. She is carrying a great handful of oxeye daisies, gleaned from the new-mown hay—adding now a tall spray of quaking grass, now a leaf of bright red sorrel, and looking now and then with wistful eyes at the flowers for whose brief life she thus provides a little longer span. The sun is down. The long day's work is ended. In the combe yonder, the little sleepy hollow that dies away among the quiet hills, the purple shadows deepen, and the last faint lingering glow fades slowly from the cliffs along its southern verge.

No clink of scythe-blade now, no sound of toil. The last note of labour and of daylight is the shouting from some distant farm, where the last load is being cheered into the stack-yard. A restless corncrake cries among the long grass of the next meadow that stands waiting for the scythe. Far off among the elms beyond the church an owl hoots. It is the hour of rest; the hour when, over the blue vault above,

—the peace of God, for this broad hollow in the hills. Slowly on the quiet landscape falls the restful stillness of the summer night.

It is strange to sit, this bright September morning, under the shadow of a noble row of limes, and listen to the whirr of the iron mower as it rattles round and round the wide meadow yonder. It is late for haymaking. Among the branches overhead are the red and gold of autumn, and the grass at the feet of the old trees is strewn with withered leaves. These fly-catchers that flit across the lawn and sail back to their stations along the fence will soon be leaving us. It cannot be long before the chiff-chaffs, now calling so blithely in the limes, are silent. The clear, sweet singing of the robins is far more in keeping with the spirit of autumn, than the sound of the machine. But the rain and the sun between them have brought a noble aftermath to gladden the hearts of the farmers, whose case will, after all, not be quite so evil as they feared.

It is a strange experience to hear, in the pauses of the iron reaper, the mellow sound of bells that are ringing for the Harvest Home. Strange to cheer the last load into the stack-yard, and to assemble for a Harvest Festival, while fresh-cut hay is still lying in the fields. Towards the grand old tower on the hill-slope yonder, that for so many ages has kept watch and ward over the parish, the village folk, in all their holiday attire, are trooping across this pleasantest of Mendip valleys. As we make our way with them along the green country lanes, we can see how the hedge-rows are beginning already to wear the hues of autumn. The Old Man's Beard is all grey with its feathery seeds. Dogwood and Guelder Rose are bright with wayside fruit. The banks are gay with St. John's wort and Golden Rod and tall Canterbury Bells.

Pausing a minute under the old churchyard yew, that for unknown centuries has spread its dark arms over the dust of the forefathers of the hamlet, the little knots of villagers file into the church. The porch is hung with oat sheaves and red apples; and over the door are hung boughs of wild hedge-row plums, bullace, not sloes, so thickly clustered and with so rare a bloom that they might pass easily for grapes.

There are but few farmers in the congregation. The hay is "down" in the meadows; that is one reason. Some farmers, too, have no mind for thanksgiving—forgetful that half a loaf is, at any rate, better than no bread at all. But some at least of the villagers have agreed to carry out the injunction expressed in the wheaten letters that lie on a green fringe of ferns all along under the south wall—"Honour the Lord with thy first "fruits"—for the windows are heaped with fruit and vegetables, with apples and 'taters, and huge marrows—the best of each man's field or garden. The pulpit is draped with heather and brown bracken, hung with grapes and apples, and long trails of bryony; while the font, with which generations of parishioners have made early and perhaps not altogether agreeable acquaintance, is lost in a great pile of ferns and flowers. The chancel is a very bower of green. Lectern and reading-desk are wreathed with creepers and corn sheaves and trophies of the harvest.

The hour of service is drawing near. The chimes, that just now were swinging softly overhead, break off into the homing-bell. The rest of the congregation troop slowly in. Young village beauties, conscious of admiring glances, are scattered here and there—bright reliefs of light and colour among the darker costumes of the men. The choir-boys, conscious too, but more sheepish as they run the gauntlet of less sympathetic eyes, muster under the tower, where presently the tall curate joins them, and the curtain is drawn across like a sort of gigantic conjuring-box. Young folks they are, for the most part, that fill up the benches. Yet there is a good sprinkling of the older generation. That is a fine sample of a West Country farmer yonder, that burly red-faced figure, glancing idly at the tablets on the wall in "memory" of long-forgotten yeomen, "late of this parish," or the stony figures weeping silently into colossal urns—that doubtless are as great a wonder to him now as when he was a boy.

The bell stops. The whispers cease. A solemn hush falls on the gathered worshippers. And now the Vicar, from his station under the tower, calls on his flock to join in the thanksgiving hymn—

Two and two the choir-boys pass, singing, up the aisle, their clear tones mingling with the deeper voices of their elders. The old men, no longer strong enough to swing a scythe or turn a furrow, sit silent. The lines on their reverent faces seem like records of hard times and bitter weather. Their working days are done. In the words the choir are singing, they are waiting to

The sweet notes of the anthem, "I will lift up mine eyes to the hills," roll among the dark rafters overhead. The preacher exhorts us to thankfulness, even for what we may look on as adversity. Should we be so ungracious, he asks, as to return no thanks at all because a gift turned out to be smaller than we expected? Farmers as a rule certainly have, rightly or wrongly, a reputation for, let us say, not always being so thankful as they might be. It was a yeoman of this very parish who, when congratulated once upon the extraordinary crops, all good alike, replied—"That's where 'tis; 'tis all so good we shan't have nothing to give to the poor stock!" A good discourse, straightforward and hard-hitting, true and telling.

We file out under the ancient doorway, and pass in procession under the flags and streamers and mottoes that the villagers have hung at intervals across the green lanes, to the place where, in less serious fashion, the people of the hamlet, of all sorts and conditions, are to meet on equal terms—Vicar and Lady Bountiful and dames of high degree on the one side, and farmers and labourers on the other—for a frolic in the spacious meadow. It is an ideal day for it; the air is warm, the grass is dry. Tea in the tent is the first business; a tent brave with festoons and flags and decorations. There is a hint in one of the mottoes at the shortcomings of the season—

Follows then a game of rounders, in which the Vicar, after much persuasion, agrees to play, if another somewhat elderly pillar of the Church will take a hand too. It were long to tell the varying fortunes of the game; how the portly figure of the wheelwright was hampered by the unwonted dignity—as to workadays, that is—of a long frock coat; how the village butcher, glorious in a white waistcoat, forgets it in the heat of battle; how a tall young lady in grey makes the most brilliant of catches; and how the pillar of the Church was thrown out by the long curate. And if the Vicar plays no very conspicuous part in the game, his boys are the life of it; and it is his daughter too, who, in a far corner of the field, leads a dance of village children, to the old-world ditty, "As we go gathering nuts in May, nuts in May, nuts in May," their sweet young voices sounding clear above the shouts of the players.

But the game is ended. The next move is to the tent, hung now with clusters of lamps, and with everything cleared ready for a dance. The band on a daïs in the centre, an uncommonly good band too, strikes up a lively air. There is a little shyness at first starting—not more than fifty couples, perhaps, to begin with; a little awkwardness, and a few collisions; but the company is pervaded with such imperturbable good humour that no one cares for any mishap. As the evening wears on the gaps on the seats against the canvas walls grow wider. And when the first square dance is about to begin there is a good deal of active searching for partners. "Have you got a 'vizzyvizze'?" says a young farmer to a village belle. The Vicar pleads that his dancing days are over; but it is clear that no one takes more delight than he in the innocent merry-making of his flock. A hundred pairs of dancers are footing merrily on the short, dry turf. "Warm, b'aint it?" says one sturdy young farmer to another, who stands mopping his brow at the end of the set.

But as the summer night wears on, and the revellers settle to their work in earnest, it is a warmer business still. Hats are tilted further and further back; waistcoats are loosened; and at length, in the closing reel, hats are tossed aside and coats even are discarded. It is an orderly company, quiet and well-behaved to the very last, breaking off their revels on the stroke of midnight, trooping out of the tent that, with its multitudinous lamps, is bright against the moonless sky, its festoons of flags and creepers showing clearly through the canvas walls. They go their several ways across the wide parish, along the dim, unlighted lanes, to meet no more, under such conditions at any rate, until next year brings round another Harvest Home.

There are many symbols on the dial of Nature to mark the changing of the year. Such signs are the brightening colours of the meadows, and the growing hosts of insect life. Such a sign is the strange, noonday silence of the woodland; and such, too, is the change in the cuckoo's cry—faltering, even before the longest day. Such signs are the gathering of the swallows, the purple mist on the plumed reeds by the river, the blackberry clusters ripening fast along the hedge-row, the butterflies that flutter in through the open windows, seeking already some dark nook in which to hide themselves in good time before the setting in of winter.

But plainer even than these, for most of us at any rate, is the altered tone of the hedge-rows—ever ready to answer to the influence of the sunshine. It is under the hedge-row that spring leaves her fairest traces—violets white and blue, and primroses, with their soft, delicate perfume. May crowns the thickets with the foamy fragrance of the hawthorn. June studs the long briar sprays with sweet wild roses, fairest of all flowers of summer. And now, again, these hot summer days are lending new beauty to the country lanes; not of flowers or of fresh young foliage, but of mellow leaves and gleaming berries.

There is a special charm about these old West Country lanes, worn, sometimes, by the clumsy wheels and toiling feet of many centuries, deep down below the fields on either hand; lanes that lead perhaps to nowhere, or that lose themselves in the meadows; lanes that in our fathers' time were, it may be, King's highways, and that now grass-grown and neglected, with deep ruts and broadening hollows, where water lies in winter, are known only to the birds'-nester, or to village children in quest of nuts or blackberries. For most of us these quests are but memories of childhood. Most of us can but echo the lament of the poet:

And yet, perhaps, though the feast of to-day is for the eye rather than the palate, we welcome as keenly as we ever did, nutting time, or days of blackberry harvest. We think less of the rich, ripe clusters, no doubt, but we are more alive to the beauty of the leaves, of the red stems that show so well among the green shadows, of the withering foliage, torn and ragged, yet touched in the autumn with gold and russet and fiery crimson.

The old yew yonder, by the church on the hillside, under whose broad shadow so many centuries of village folk have gathered week by week, when service was over, to talk of the haying, and the weather, and even, it may be, of the business of their neighbours, stands out a dark, funereal mass against the grey masonry behind it. A nearer view would show that its heavy green is relieved by a thousand points of gold, not yet wholly tarnished, but at this distance they are lost in the surrounding gloom. The copper beeches by the manor house, that of late gleamed like metal in the brilliant sunshine, are darkening into black. The larch plantations, marshalled in well-ordered phalanx along the old road half up the hill, have long since lost their freshness, and the leaves of this great pollard oak, whose maimed boughs throw a shadow none too wide, are bright no longer.

For centuries has the old tree cooled its knotted roots in the black earth of this swampy hollow. Signs of age are only too plain to read. The furrowed bark has been split away in patches, revealing underneath the galleries of wood-boring creatures; and the old trunk is scarred with pits that the wood-peckers have been digging, searching for fat white beetle grubs, or for the evil-smelling caterpillar of the goat-moth. And just below the pollarded branches there is a woodpecker's hole, whose well-worn threshold suggests years of occupation.

Round the broad base of the tree marsh plants are growing—spearwort and water-plantain, broad blades of iris, and cool green plumes of marestail. In the long grass of the field that stretches far on either hand, there are crimson spikes of orchis, pale marsh valerian, and bright ragged robin, and here and there nods a white plume of early cotton grass. It is a mere thread of water that, loitering slowly through the meadow, seems to pause round the roots of this old tree; the very slenderest of streams. Even the reedy hollow where it steals along, a broken line of silver, lost at times among sedges and brooklime and strong meadow grasses, is hardly noticed as it wanders idly through the field. Yet the birds know it well. Here the snipe lie in the hard weather. Here, too, in winter, you may watch the water-rail stealing in and out among the leafless thickets, through the jungle of dead stems of fig-wort, and hemlock, and tall hemp agrimony. On the black mud of the shore you may trace to-day the light footprints of the wagtails that have their lodging in a cranny of the ruined mill in the next meadow, the broad sign manual of the moorhens whose nest is nearer still, and the tracks of many a water-loving bird beside.

And, though the listening ear can but just catch the faint tinkle of the tiny ripples that fret among the hemlock stems, there is as much life along this little streamlet as by the mill pool yonder, though the rumble of the old wheel and the plash of the mill-race seem louder, even at this distance, than the low murmur of these tiny waves. There, among the rafters of the boat-house, the swallows build, and white-breasted martins have their nests under the broad eaves of the mill. But it is here, by this oozy margin, that they find the clay to frame their dwellings.

The moorhen rides in company with the little fleet of ducks upon the pool, though she draws hastily away when the miller lounges through the door to open the sluice, her nodding head keeping time to the quick beating of her paddles. But it is here that she hides her nest. It is behind the stems of that hazel bush, close down by the stream. Last night, when the old bird went off with a splash like a water-rat, there was just light enough to count the seven eggs. But now, when you steal quietly up, there is no old bird on guard. No eggs are in the nest. It is filled to the very brim with something dark, like a black shadow. All at once, as you stand peering down at it from the farther shore, hardly a yard away, the shadow breaks into fragments that struggle over the edge and plunge down into the water—seven fluffy little balls of sable down, each with a touch of scarlet for a beak; seven bold young moorhens, making their first venture into the great world; argonauts born, paddling along the diminutive reaches of their tiny river, and scrambling away into the green jungle on the shore with a skill and readiness that is the heir-loom of untold generations.

The sedge-warbler, too, loves the reedy fringe of the mill pond, and he never shows to more advantage than when he balances on one of those tall spears of bulrush. But his nest is here, in yonder bush, whose foliage the cows have cropped so close. A strange song is his, copied now from the skylark, and now from the swallow; and now again you might think that a party of house-sparrows were having a real good gossip down by the water.

Sparrow-like, too, is the note of a bird that sits motionless on the topmost twig of a maple tree that leans over the brook. His shape and his smart plumage, the flatness of his head and the rich red brown of his back, mark him for a shrike, a butcher-bird. He, too, is fond of this quiet corner. Year after year his mate and he come back to the hawthorn bush below the maple, to repair the great nest in which so many families have been reared. On a broad flat stone that serves for a bridge over the meadow ditch near by are strewn some broken snail shells and a half-eaten cockchafer. But that was not his doing. If you look closely at the bush below his perch, the bush that shelters his well-hidden nest, you may discover the butcher-bird's "larder;" may see spitted on the long thorns that help to guard his dwelling, beetles, or bees, or even a young bird, or, it may be, a dragon-fly, who surely must have been taken unaware, since with those strong gauzy wings it is said he can distance even the swallow in his swift career.

A man with a pail slung on his shoulder, and with a milking stool in his hand, comes slowly out from the farm buildings, a dog following at his heels; a dog grey and shabby and unkempt, of breed altogether past description. But he is a master of his art, mongrel though he be. The man points to a group of cattle in the far corner of the field. At once the dog goes off to bring them in, heading and turning, and then urging them gently homeward, with marvellous skill and patience, encouraged now and again by his master's strange and inarticulate shouts. A troop of goslings is grazing in the middle of the field, goose and gander standing sentinel at either end of the extended line. The old birds sound a challenge as the dog goes by, and lower their silly heads, and hiss and charge at him; while he, his mind set wholly on the business of the moment, canters past unmoved. An angry gander is by no means an antagonist to be despised. There is something particularly irritating, too, in the style of the attack. We can hardly wonder at the village urchin who, having been sorely harassed as to his unprotected legs by vicious digs of the old bird's beak, tried to soothe his wounded feelings by stoning at long range the unoffending goslings, blubbering out in mingled pain and rage to the indignant farmer who presently seized on him red-handed: "What for they goschicks' fayther bite I, then?"

Round the old farm yonder, whose weather-stained roofs and walls half ruinous just show among its clustering trees, there is a picture of quiet autumn life. In the spacious stack-yard a party of labourers, whose sunburnt faces glow against the green background of the trees like so many round red autumn suns, are standing about a great waggon, tossing hay to men at work on the fast-growing ricks of new, sweet-smelling aftermath. It is an ancient homestead. A thousand summers, it may be, has hay been cleared from these broad meadows. A thousand times, at the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, have the sheaves been piled in this old stack-yard. The hamlet of three houses is little changed, either in name or character, since the days of Edward the Confessor, when Brictric held it, paying geld for one hide of land; when two villeins, with as many boors and serfs, made up all its scanty population. A pleasant place, this warm autumn afternoon, is the hollow at the back of the farm; a broad space of level grass land, once an orchard, and with a few forlorn old apple trees still standing in it; bordered on one side by a green lane, and on the other by a broken line of hedge-row, through whose wide gaps the thistles and brake-fern are marching down like caterans from the hills, bent on reconquering the pasture-land and turning it once more into a wilderness. All round it rise the hills, robbing it of some hours of sunshine indeed, yet sheltering it from every wind that blows. Just showing over a steep brow above are the white houses of a hill-side village, once in the heart of a great mining field—the very place Macaulay had in view when he described how