 CHAPTER 6 A FARMER OF THE OLDEN TIMES The winding paths, traced by a hare in spring as he roams over an arable field, show that he must cover a mile within a furlong. From a gateway one morning I watched a hare busy in this way, restlessly passing to and fro over the lands. Every motion was visible because, although the green wheat was rising in an adjacent field, no crop had yet appeared here. Now the hare came direct toward me, running down a furrow. Then he turned short and followed a course like the letter V. Next he crossed the angle of the field and came back along the shore of the ditch, under the hedge. Then away to the center of the field, where he stayed some time, exploring up one furrow and down another, his ears and the hump of his back only seen above the clods. But suddenly he caught scent of something that alarmed him, and away he went at full speed. Then on the open ground the peculiar way in which the hind limbs are thrown forward right under the body, thus giving an immense stride, was clearly displayed. I had been so interested in the hare that I had not observed Hillary coming along the other side of the low fence, looking at his wheat. The hare, busy as he was and seeming to see nothing, had crossed his wind. Hillary came to me and we walked together along the wagon-track, repassing the wheat. He was full about it. He was always grieving over the decadence of the wheat crop. There was nothing he went on so pleasant to watch as it came up. Nothing that required so much care and skill. Nothing so thoroughly associated with the traditions of English farming as wheat, and yet nothing so disappointing. Foreign importations had destroyed this very mainstay. Now that crop which he had just left had tillered out well, but what profit should he get from the many stocks that had tillered or sprung from each single grain, thus promising a fifty-fold return? It had been well got in, and as the old saw had it, well sown half-grown. It had been in the ground the proper time, long in the bed, big in the head. But likely enough the price next autumn would not much more than pay the expense of preparation. The thunderstorm before Christmas was not perhaps a favorable omen since winter's thunder and summer's flood bowed old England no good. Last year showed that summer flood was as destructive as in the olden time. But then there would have been a rise of prices, according to the saying, when the veil shall feed the hill every man shall eat his fill, but when the hill shall feed the veil the penny-loaf shall be but small. Now, last season, so far as our home harvests were concerned, the hill did feed the veil, but the penny-loaves were as large and as plentiful as usual owing to foreign grain. In those old days, seventy or eighty years since, the whole population of the kingdom watched the weather with anxiety, and it was then that the signs and tokens of birds and plants and the set of the wind at particular times were regarded as veritable oracles to be inquired into not without fear and trembling. Hilary heard all about it when he was a lad from old Jonathan who had a corn farm up in the hills, and where he used to go to plow. Hilary never stated the exact degree, but there was some relationship between them. Two branches, I fancy, of the same family. He seemed to have a very bitter memory of the old man, now dead, who had been a hard master to him in his youth, besides which some family jar had arisen over money-matters. Still, he was fond of quoting Jonathan and referenced a wheat in the hay-day of cordon farming. Jonathan remembered when a load of wheat fetched fifty-five pounds, a load being five quarters or ten sacks, or eleven pounds a quarter. The present average of wheat was about two pounds six shillings per quarter. At the same time, bread was at three shillings a gallon. It is now about one shilling six pence. The wages of an agricultural laborer were six shillings a week. It was gambling, positive gambling, in the staff of life. No farmer was held in any esteem if he did not keep his weak ricks till harvest came again before threshing them out. Men grew rich suddenly and knew not what to do with their money. Farmers who had been brought up hard, living like laborers, working like laborers, and would little more amusement than laborers, all at once found their pockets full of coin. The wheat they had been selling at five pounds a load ran up to fifty pounds. With their purses thus crammed full, what were they to do? There was nothing but drink, and they did drink. In those days, the farmer in his isolated homestead was more cut off from the world than the settler at the present time in the backwoods or on the prairies. The telegraph wires span the continent of America and are carried across the dry deserts of Australia. Wherever the settler 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 of the utter lack of communication in the old world of our immediate forefathers. The farmer, being away from the main road in the track of the mail coaches, knew no one but his neighbors, saw no one, and heard but little. Since there were none, other than what could be had at the alehouse or by riding into the market town to the inn there, so that when this great flush of prosperity came upon them, old Jonathan and his friends had nothing to do but drink. Up at the Idavers, as his place was called, a lonely homestead on a plane between the downs, they used to assemble, and at once put up the shutters, whether it was dark or not, not wishing to know whether it was day or night. Sometimes the head carter would venture in for instructions and be gruffly told to take his team and do so and so. As, sir, he would reply, as did that job yesterday. His master had ordered him to do it the day before, but was oblivious that twenty-four hours had passed. The middle-aged men stood this continuous drinking without much harm, their constitutions having become hardened and set, but it killed off, numbers said the younger men. They drank ale, principally, strong ale, for at that time in lonely farmhouses they were guiltless of wines and spirits, but the enormous price of fifty pounds per load suggested luxuries, and it was old Jonathan at the Idavers who introduced gin. Till then, no gin even, nothing but ale, had been consumed in that faraway spot. But Jonathan brought in the gin, which speedily became popular. He called it spoon-drink, a spoon being used with a sugar, as a distinguishing name, and as spoon-drink, accordingly, it was known. When anyone desired to reduce the strength of his glass, they did indeed pour him out some more water from the kettle, but having previously filled the kettle with a spirit, his last date became worse than the first. While thus they reveled, the laborers worked the flails in the barn, threshing out the truly golden grain. The farmers used to take pains to slip around upon them unexpectedly, or meet them as they were going home from work, in order to check the pilfering of the wheat. The laborer was not paid holy in cash, he had a bushel of the tale, or second flower, from the mill in lieu of money, settling once a month. Their life was hard indeed, but the great prosperity which had come upon the farmers did them no good. In too many cases, it melted away and drank. The habit of drinking became settled in a family. Bad habits endured after the prosperity had departed, and in some cases, those who had once owned their farms as well as occupied them had to quit the homes of their forefathers. Here and there one, however, laid the foundation of a fortune, as fortunes are understood in the country, and shrewd old Jonathan was one of these. Even down to very recent days, a spell of drinking, simple drinking, was the staple amusement of many an otherwise respectable farmer. Not many years since, it was not unusual for some well-to-do farmer of the old school to ride off on his nag and not be heard of for a week, till he was discovered at a distant roadside inn where he had spent the interval in straightforward drinking. These habits are now happily extinct. It was in those old times that wheat was bought and hoarded with the express object of raising the price to famine pinch, a thing then sometimes practicable, though not always successful. Thus in 1801 the price of wheat in March was 55 pounds per load, while in October it had fallen to 15 pounds. Men forgot the misery of the poor and their eagerness for guineas. Hillary, with all his old prejudices, was not so foolish as to desire a return of times like that. He had undergone probation himself in youth, for farmer's sons were but little better off than plow lads even in his early days, and he did not wish to make money by another man'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 gusto with 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 up to your elbow and now hold up your palm. See the grains are as plump as cherry-stones. After hearing Hillary talk so much of old Jonathan, I thought I should like to see the place where he had lived, and later in the season walked up on the hills for that purpose. The stunted fir trees on the downs gave so little shadow that I was glad to find a hawthorn under whose branches I could rest on the sward. The prevalent winds of winter, sweeping without check along the open slope, had bent the hawthorn before them, and the heat of the sultry summer day appeared the greater on that exposed height. On either hand hills succeeded to hills, and behind I knew they extended farther than the eye could reach. Immediately beneath in front there was a plain, at its extreme boundary a wood, and beyond that the horizon was lost in the summer haze. Wheat, barley and oats, barley and wheat and beans completely occupied the plain. It was one vast expanse of cereals without a sign of human life, for the reaper had not yet commenced, and the bailiff's cottages were hidden among the ricks. There was an utter silence at noonday, nothing but yellowing wheat beneath the ramparts of the hills around and the sun above. But, though out of sight, there was a farmhouse behind a small copse and clump of elms full of rook's nests, a short way from the foot of the down. This was the Idavers, once the residence of old Jonathan. It was the last farm before reaching a hill district proper, and from the slope here all the fields of which it consisted were visible. The house was small, for in those days farmers did not look to live in villas, until within the last few years even the parlor floor was of stone flags. Rushes used to be strewn in the halls of palaces and ancient times, and seventy years ago old Jonathan grew his own carpets. The softest and best of the bean straw grown on the farm was selected and scattered on the floor of the sitting rooms as warm and dry to the feet, and that was all the carpet in the house. Just before sheep shearing time, too, Jonathan used to have the nettles cut that flourished around the back of the sheds, and strewn on the floor of the barn. The nettle shriveled up dry, and the wool did not stick to them, but could be gathered easily. With his own hands he would carry out a quart of beans to the pigs, just a quart at a time and no more, that they might eat every one, and that none might be wasted. So, too, he would carry them a few acorns in his coat pocket, and watch the relish with which the swine devoured their favorite food. He saved every bit of crooked wood that was found about the place, for at that date iron was expensive, and wood that had grown crooked and was therefore strong as well as curved was 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 in the orchard it was cut out to form part of a plow and saved till wanted. Jonathan's hard head withstood even the whirl of the days when corn was at famine prices. But these careful economies, this continual saving, put more money in his purse than all that sudden flesh of prosperity. Every groat thus saved was as a nail driven into an oak, fixed and stable, becoming firmer as time went on. How strangely different the farmers of today, with a score of machines and appliances, with expensive feeding-stuffs, with well furnished villas. Each one of Jonathan's beans in his quart mug, each one of his acorns in his pocket, became a guinea. Jonathan's hat was made to measure on his own special block by the hatter in Overborough town, and it was so hard and stout that he could sit upon it without injury. His top boots always hung near the fireplace that they might not get moldy, and he rode into the market upon a short-tail horse, as he called his crop-tail nag. A farmer was nothing thought of unless he wore top boots, which seemed a distinguishing mark, as it were, of the equestrian order of agriculture. But his shoes were made straight, not as now one to each foot, a right and a left, but each exactly alike, and he changed his shoes every morning, wearing one on one foot one day and on the other the next, that they might not get worn to either foot in particular. Shoes lasted a great length of time in those days, the leather being all tanned with oak bark only, and thoroughly seasoned before it was cut up. There is even a story of a farmer who wore his best shoes every Sunday for seven years and Sundays, fifty years, and when he had died, had them buried with him, still far from worn out. A traveler once returned from America, in those days a very far off land, and was recounting the wonders he had seen, and among them how the folk there used slays, not only for driving in but for the removal of heavy goods. But Jonathan did not think it strange, since when he was young wheeled vehicles were not so common. He had himself seen loads of hay drawn home on sleds from English meadows, and could tell where a sled had been last used. There were aged men living around the Hamlet in his day, if that could be called a Hamlet in which there were barely a score of people, all told, who could recollect when the first wagon came to the Idaverse. At all events they pointed out a large field called the Conagers, where it was taken to turn it around, for it was constructed and so primitive a style that the four wheels would not pass under the body, and thus required a whole field to turn in. At that date folk had no banking accounts, but kept their coin in a strong 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 should not be observed into the pigsty and showed him fifty guineas hid in the thatch. That was by no means all his property, but the old fellow said with a wink that he liked to have a little hoard of his own that his wife knew nothing about. Some land being put up for sale after biddings by the well-to-do residents, an old dealer in a very small way, as was supposed, bid above them all. The company looked upon him with contempt, and his offer was regarded as mere folly. But he produced a nail-bag from under his coat and counted out the money. A nail-bag is made of the coarsest of all kinds of sacking. In this manner the former generation is doing outward show, collected their money, coin by coin, until at last they became substantial men and owners of real estate. So few were the conveniences of life that men often had to leave the road and cross several fields out of their way to light their pipes at a burning couch heap or line kiln. They prided themselves then in that hill-district that they had neither a cow nor a poor married man in the parish. There was no cow because it was entirely a corn-growing place. The whole resident population was not much over a score, and of the laborers they boasted not one was married. For in those old times each parish kept its own poor, and consequently disliked an increase of the population. The farmers met in vestry from time to time to arrange for the support of the surplus labor. The appearance of a fresh family would have meant a fresh tax upon them. They regarded additional human beings as an encumbrance. The millers sent their flower round the country then on pack horses. Wagons and carts were not so common as now. While the ways, once you quitted the main road, were scarcely passable. Even the main roads were often in such a state that foot-passengers could not get along, but left the road and followed a foot-path just inside the hedge. Such foot-paths ran beside the roads for miles. Here and there in country places a short section of such tracks may still be found. Pack roads too may occasionally be met with, retaining their designation to this day. It was the time of the great wars with the First Napoleon, and the poor people, as the wheat went up to famine prices, were often in a straight for bread. When the millers' pack horse appeared the cottagers crowded round and demanded the price. If it had risen a penny, the infuriated mob of women would sometimes pull a miller's boy off the horse and duck him in the village pond. The memory of those old times is still vivid in farmhouses, and at hillaries I have myself handled old Jonathan's walking staff, which he and his father before him used in traversing on foot those perilous roads. It was about five feet long, perhaps more, an inch and a half in diameter, and shod with an iron ferrule and stout spike. With this he could prod the slews and ascertain their depth, or use it as a leaping pole. And if threatened by sturdy rogues, whirl it about their heads as a quarter-staff. Wars and famines were then terrible realities. Men's minds were full of them, and superstition flourished. The foggers and shepherds saw signs in the sky and read the stars. Down at Luckett's place one winter's night, when folk almost fancied they could hear the roar of Napoleon's cannon, the old fogger came rushing in with the news that the armies could be seen fighting in the heavens. It was an aurora, the streamers shooting up towards the zenith and great red spots among the stars, the ghastly stains of the wounded. The old fogger declared that as he went out with his lantern to attend to the cow's calving, he could see the blood dripping on the back of his hand as it fell down from the battling hosts above. To us, the ignorance of even such comparatively recent times is almost incredible. As Hillary was telling me of such things as we sat in his house one evening, there grew upon our ears a peculiar sound, a humming, deep bass somewhat resembling the low notes of a piano with a pressure on the pedal. It increased and became louder, coming from the road which passed the house. It was caused by a very large flock of sheep, driven slowly. The individual baa of each lamb was so mixed as it were with the bleed of its fellow that the swelling sound took a strange, mysterious tone, a voice that seemed to speak of trouble and perplexity and anxiety for rest. Hillary, as a farmer, must of course go out to see whose they were, and I went with him. But before he reached the garden gate he turned back, remarking, It's Johnson flock. I know the tang of his tankards. The flat-shaped bells hung on a sheep's knacker called tankards, and Hillary could distinguish one flock from another by the varying notes of their bells. Reclining on the sweet short sword under the hawthorn on the down, I looked over the eye of her plane and thought of the olden times. As I gazed I presently observed, far away, beside some ricks, the short black funnel of an engine, and made it out to be a steam plow waiting till the corn should be garnered to tear up the stubble. How much meaning there lay in the presence of that black funnel. There were the same broad open fields, the same beautiful crops of golden wheat, the same green hills, and the same sun ripening the grain. But how strangely changed all human affairs since old Jonathan, in his straight-made shoes with his pike staff and the acorns in his pocket, trudged along the footpaths. CHAPTER 7 The Cuckoo Fields The cuckoos came so frequently to some grassland just outside the chase and sloping down to the brook that I gave the spot the name of the cuckoo fields. There were two detached copses in them, of no great extent, and numerous oaks and hawthorns, while the brook below was bordered with willow-stowels. This stretch of grass was divided into two large fields by a line of decaying posts and rails, and it became a favorite resort of mine in the warm days of spring because I could almost always see and hear the cuckoos here. Why they should love it so much is not easy to tell, unless on account of the comparatively barren character of the soil. The earth seemed to be of a very different kind to that in the rich and fertile meadows and fields close by, for the grass was rough, short, and thin, and soon became grayish or brown as the summer advanced, burning or drying up under the sun. It may often be observed that a piece of waste, like furs, when in the midst of good land, is much frequented by all birds and animals, though where there is nothing else but waste, they are almost entirely absent. As the oaks come out into full leaf, the time when the meadows become beautiful, the notes of the cuckoo sound like a voice crying, come hither from the trees. Then, sitting on the gray and lichen-covered rail under the cover of a hawthorn, I saw sometimes two and sometimes three cuckoos following each other, courting, now round the cops, now by the hedge of the brook, and presently along the rails where they constantly perched. Occasionally one would alight on the sword among the purple flowers of the meadow orcas. From the marshy meadow across the brook, a pee-wit rose from time to time, uttering his plaintive call and wheeling to and fro on the wing. At the sound a second and a third appeared in succession, and after beating up and down for a few minutes, settled again in the grass. The meadow might have been called a ploverie, as we say, rookery and heronry, for the green plovers or pee-wits always had several nests in it. Of course the humble bees that went by could be watched for some way. Their large size and darker color made them visible, as they now went down into the grass and now started forward again. The honeybees, small and somewhat lighter in color, could not be seen so far. They were busy in the sunshine, for the hive bee must gather most of its honey before the end of July, before the scythe has laid the grass in the last meadow-low. Few, if any, flowers come up after the scythe has gone over, except the white clover, which almost alone shows in the aftermath, or as the country people call it, the latter-math. Near me, a titlark every few minutes rose from the sword, and spreading its wings came down a slant, singing with all its might. Some sarsen stones just showed above the grass. The old folks say that these boulders grow in size and increase in number. The fact is, that in some soils the boulder protrudes more and more above the surface in the course of time, and others come into view that were once hidden. Well, in another place the turf rises, and they seem to slowly sink into the earth. The monotonous and yet pleasing cry of the pee-wits, the sweet titlark singing overhead, and the cuckoos flying around, fill the place with the magic charm of spring. Coming to these cuckoos fields day after day, there was always something to interest me, either in the meadows themselves or on the way thither. The very dust of the road had something to show, for under the shadowy elms a little seed or grain had jolted down through the chinks in the bed of a passing wagon, and there the chaff inches and sparrows had congregated. As they moved to and fro, they had left the marks of their feet in the thick white dust, so crossed and intertangled in a maze of tracks that no one could have designed so delicate and intricate a pattern. If it was cloudy, still, glancing over the cornfields just as you turned partly round a look, there seemed a brilliant streak of sunshine across them. This was a broad band of charlotte. Its light yellow is so gaudy and glaring in the mass that as it first catches the eye, it seems as if the land were lit up by the sun. After it, the butter cups appear of a quiet color, like dead gold and contrast. Underfoot, almost in the very dust of the road, the silver weed opened its yellow petals, and where there was a dry bank or by the gateways leading into the corn, the pink Pimpernel grew. From some time I suspected the Pimpernel of not invariably closing its petals before rain, and at last by precise observation found that it did not. Twice in a comparatively short period I noticed the petals wide open within a few minutes of a shower. It appears rather to close during the atmospheric change which occurs previous to the rain than to the rain itself. Once, now and then, a shower seems to come up in the driest weather without warning or change in the atmosphere. The cloud is over and gone almost before it seems worthwhile to take shelter. Do the approach of such shower clouds the Pimpernel does not invariably respond, but it is perfectly accurate if anything serious be brewing. By a furrow in the sward by the roadside, there grew a little piece of some species of gorse, so small and delicate with a tiniest yellow flowers that it was well worthy of a place where it would be admired, for few could have seen it hidden there. Bird's foot lotus covered the sward on one part of the cuckoo fields on the higher ground near the woods where the soil was dry, and by the hedge there were some bushy plants of the rest-herrol whose prickly branches repel cattle and whose appearance reproaches the farmer for neglect. Yet though an outcast with animals and men, it bears a beautiful flower, butterfly-shaped and delicately tinted with pink. Now, as the days roll on, the blue succory and the scarlet poppy stand side by side in the yellow wheat, but just outside my cuckoo fields, and one or two stray corn-cockles bloom. They are not common here and are perhaps brought from a distance. Here you may walk many miles and even wait several harvests to see a corn-cockle. The thistle-down floats and, see, yonder the white balls are rolling before 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 yellow petals dotted with black specks above the bunches of grass. The leaves held up to the light seem to have numerous eyelets, as if pricked but not quite through, windows in the leaf. In the grass the short self-heel shows, and leaning over the gate on the edge of the wheat you may see curious prickly seed vessels of the corn-butter-cup, the hedgehog, whose spines, however, will not scratch the softest skin. Resting on the rail under the Hawthorn for a minute or two in early spring, when it was too chilly to stay long, I watched a flock of rooks and jackdaws soaring in the sky. Round and round and ever upwards they circled, the jackdaws, of course, betraying their presence by 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 approaching of the nesting-time. This soaring and wheeling is evidently done for recreation, like a dance. Presently the flock seems to tumble and fall, and there comes the rushing sound of the air swiftly departed by their outspread wings as they dive a hundred feet in a second. The noise 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 hear the pheasants utter their peculiar roost cry, and the noise of their wings as they flew up in the wood. The vibration is so loud that it might almost be described as thumping. By and by the cuckoo began to lose his voice. He gurgled and gasped and cried guck guck guck guck, and could not utter the soft, melodious coo. The latest date on which I ever heard the cuckoo here, to be certain, was the day before St. Swithin, July 14, 1879. The nightingales, too, lose their sweet notes, but not their voices. They remain in the hedges long after their song has ceased. Passing by the hawthorn bushes up to the end of July, you may hear a bird within that seems to threaten you with a loud sweet curr, and looking in you will find it to be a nightingale. The spelling exactly represents the sound, the R being twirled. Sweet curr, curr, comes from the interior of the bushes with an angry emphasis. Along the lower part of these meadows there was a brook, and the brook-sparrows were chattering ceaselessly as I walked among the willow-stoles by at one morning towards the end of June. On the left hand the deep stream flowed silently round its gentle curves, and on the other, through the willows and alders, the grassy slope of the cuckoo fields was visible. Broad leaves of the marsh marigold, a flower long since gone, covered the ground. Light green horsetails were dotted thickly about, and tall grasses flourished rising to the knee. Dark shallow pools were so hidden under these grasses and plants that the presence of the black and yet clear water could not be perceived 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 decaying wood, now among the sedges covering the mud-banks where the brook had silted up, now in the hedge which divided the willows from the meadow. Still the peculiar sparrow-like note, the ringing chirp, came continually from their throats. The warm sultry day delighted them. One clung to the side of a slender flag which scarcely seemed strong enough to support it, yet did not even bend under its weight. Then on again as I came nearer, but only two or three yards to recommence singing immediately. Pushing through the brushwood and past the reddish willow-pulls, I entered a very thicket of flags rising to the shoulder. These were not ribbed or bayonet-shaped, but flat, like a long sword. Three or four sprang from a single root, broad and tall, and beside them a stalk and on it the yellow iris and fall flower. The marsh seemed lit up with these bright lamps of color under the shadowy willows and the dark alders. There were a dozen at least within a few yards close around, and others dimly visible through the branches. Three large yellow petals drooping, and on the curb of each brownish model markings or lines delicately stippled. Beside them a rolled spike-like bloom 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 favorite willow stoles and sedges. Further on, the ground rose and on the drier bank the geeks grew shoulder high, towering over the brambles. It was difficult to move through the tangled underwood, so I went out into the cuckoo fields. Hillary had drained away much of the water that used to form a far larger marsh about here, and calculated as levelings in a most ingenious manner with hollow geeks. He took a wooden bowl and filled it to the brim with water. Then, cutting a dry geeks so that should be open at either end, like a tube, he floated it. The stock is very light on the bowl. Looking through this tube, he could get as level almost as accurately as with an engineer's instrument, though, of course, it was more cumbersome to use. There was a corner here that had not been moaned for a long time, and in the autumn the wild carrots took possession of it, almost to the exclusion of grass and other plants. The flower of the wild carrot gathers together as the seeds mature and forms a framework cup at the top of the stock, like a bird's nest. These bird's nests, brown and weather-beaten, endured far into the winter. The brooks-barrel still sang as I passed by again in the evening. They seemed the most unweary to birds, for you may hear them all day, all the evening, and at one o'clock next morning. Indeed, at intervals all night. By night the note is, or appears to be, less sparrow-like, or perhaps the silence of night improves it to the ear. I stayed that evening in a corner of a wheat field not yet yellow, and watched the shadows of the trees grow longer and broader as the sun declined. As the breeze rushed over the corn, there was a play of various shades of green. The stalks, as they bent this and that way, taking different hues. But under the hedge it was still. The wind could not come through, though it moved the boughs above. A mass of cloud-like flocks of wool, modeled and with small spaces of blue between, drifted slowly eastward, and its last edge formed an arch over the western horizon, under which the sun shone. The yellow vexling had climbed up from the ditch and opened its flower, and there were young nuts on the hazel-bowl. Far away in a copse, a wood pigeon called. Nearer the black birds were whistling. A willow-ren uttered his note high in the elm, and a distant yellow hammer sang to the sinking sun. The brook had once been much wider, and in flood times rendered the overbore road almost impassable. For before a bridge was built it spread widely and crossed the highway, a rushing, though shallow, torrent, fifty yards broad. The stumps of the willows that had grown by it could still be found in places, and now and then an ancient bull-pull was washed up. This grass is so tough that the tough circuctions it forms will last in water for fifty years, even when rooted up. Decade, of course, of black but still distinguishable. In those times, just previous to the construction of the railways, when the Lord of the Manor came down after Parliament rose, there used to be a competition to get hold of his coachmen. So few agricultural people traveled, and news came so slowly and in such a distorted fashion that the coachmen became a great authority. Such a brook as this was then often a serious obstacle. There was an old punt seldom used to be found in a rickyard of hillaries, close by which was an extensive pond. The punt was statched over with flags from the stream. The Moorhans were fond of this pond because it was surrounded with a great quantity of rushes. They were numerous, all up the brook. These birds, being tame and common, are not much regarded either for sport or the table. Yet a Moorhans shot at the right time of year, not till the frosts have begun, is delicious eating. If the bird were rare it would be thought to rival a woodcock, as it is probably few people ever tasted. The path to Luckett's Place from this rickyard passed a stone quarry where the excavated stone was built up in square heaps. In these heaps, in which there were many interstices and hollows, rabbits often sat out. And by stopping the entrance and carefully removing the stones, they might occasionally be taken by hand. Next, by the barn wherein spring the sparrows made a continuous noise, chirping and quarreling as they carried on their nesting operations. They sometimes flew up with long green benets and grass fibers as well as with dry straws. Then, across the road where the flint heaps always put me in mind of young Aaron, for he once gravely assured me that they were the very best places in the world on which to rest or sleep. The flints were dry and preserved the slumbering wayfarer from the damp. He had no doubt proved this when the ale was too strong. At the house I passed through the courtyard, found him just on the point of starting for overborrow with a wallet to bring back some goods from the shops. The wallet is almost unknown even in the farmsteads now. It is a kind of long bag closed at each end but with a slit in the center for the insertion of the things to be conveyed. When filled, it is slung over the shoulder, one in in front and the other behind so as to balance. Without knowing the shape of the wallet, the story of Jack the Giant Killer stowing away such enormous quantities of pudding is scarcely to be understood. Children nowadays never see such a thing. Many nursery tales contain illusions of this kind, the meaning of which must be obscure to the rising generation. Within doors I found a great discussion going forward between Hillary and the farmer who had called, as to the exact relationship of a man who had just quitted his tenancy and another who died nearly forty years before. They could not agree either as to the kinship or the date, though the visitor was the more certain because he so well remembered that there was an extraordinary cut of turven that year. The turven is the hay made on the leaves, not the meadows, out of the rough grass and benets left by the cows. To listen to the zest with which they entered into the minutest details of the family affairs of so long ago, concerning people with whom neither had any connection, how they recollected the smallest particulars was astonishing. This marvelous capacity for gossip seemed like a revelation of a totally different state of society. The memory of country people for such details is beyond belief. When the visitor left with his wife, we walked to the gate and saw them down the road, and it was curious to note that they did not walk side by side. If you meet a farmer of the old style and his wife walking together, never do you see them arm in arm. The husband walks a yard or two in front, or else on the other side of the road, and this even when they are going to church. CHAPTER VIII. CHAPTER VIII. Sicily's Diary, Hilary's Talk. Just outside the palings of the courtyard at Luckett's Place, in front of the dairy, was a line of damson and plum trees standing in a narrow patch bordered by a miniature box hedge. The threshes were always searching about in this box, which was hardly high enough to hide them, for the snails which they found there. They broke the shells on the stone flags of the garden path adjacent, and were often so intently occupied in the box as to seem to fly up from under the very feet of any one who passed. Under the damson tree the first white snow drops came, and the crocuses whose yellow petals often appeared over the snow, and presently the daffodils and the beautiful Narcissus. There were cow slips and primroses too, which the boys last year had planted upside down that they might come variegated. The earliest violet was gathered there, for the corner was enclosed on three sides, and somehow the sunshine fell more genially in that untrimmed spot than in formal gardens where it is courted. Against the house a pair was trained, and it opened its white bloom the first of all. In its shelter the birds built their nests. The chaffinches called cheerfully on the plum trees and sang in the early morning. When the apples bloomed the gold finches visited the same trees at least once a day. A dam-ass rose opened its single petals, the sweetest scented of all the roses. There were a few strawberries under the wall of the house, by and by the pairs above enlarged and the damsons were coated with the 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 branches of the damsons depended so low, looking, as it were, right into the court and pressing the fruit against your very face as you entered, that you could not choose but to take some when it was right. A blue-painted barrel churn stood by the door. Young Aaron turned it in the morning, while the finches called in the plum trees, but now and then not all the strength of his sturdy shoulders nor patient hours of turning could fetch the butter, for a witch had been busy. Sometimes on entering the dairy in the familiar countryway you might find Sicily now almost come to womanhood at the cheese-tub. As she bent over it, her rounded arms, bare nearly to the shoulder, were laid in the white milk. It must have been from the dairy that Papaya learned to bathe in milk for Sicily's arms shone white and smooth with a gleam of a perfect skin. But Mrs. Luckett would never let her touch the salt which will ruin the hands. Sicily, however, who would do something, turned the cheeses in the cheese-room alone. Taking one corner of the clean cloth in her teeth, in a second by some dexterous sleight of hand the heavy cheese was over, though ponderous enough to puzzle many a man, especially as it had to come over gently that the shape might not be injured. She did it without the least perceptible exertion. At the moment of the turn, when the weight must have been felt, there was no knot of muscle visible on her arm. That is the difference, for when Ajax strives some rock's fast weight to throw, the muscles of the man's limb knot themselves and stand out in bold relief. The smooth contour of Sicily's arm never varied. Mrs. Luckett, talking about cheese as we watched Sicily one morning, said people's tastes have much altered, for she understood that they were now fond of a foreign sort that was full of holes. The old saying was that bread should be full of holes and cheese should have none. Just then Hilary entered and completed the triad by adding that ale should make you see double. So he called for the brown jug and he and I had a glass. On my side of the jug stood a sportsman in breaches and gators, his gun presented and ever in the act of fire, his dog pointed and the birds were flying towards Hilary. Though rude in design the scene was true to nature and the times. From the buttons on the coat to the long barrel of the gun the details were accurate and nothing improved to suit the artist's fancy. To me these old jugs and mugs and bowls have a deep and human interest, for you can seem to see and know the men who drank from them in the olden days. Now a tall Wooster vase with all its elegance and gilding, though it may be valued at five thousand pounds, lacks that sympathy and may please the eye but does not touch the heart. For it has never shared in the jovial feast nor comforted weary, the soul of man has never communicated to it some of its own subtle essence. But this hollow bowl whispers back the genial songs that were shouted over it a hundred years ago. On the ancient Grecian pottery too the hunter with his spear chases the boar or urges his hounds after the flying deer. The women are dancing and you can almost hear the notes of the flute. These things were part of their daily life. These are no imaginary pictures of imaginary and impossible scenes. They are simply scenes in which every one then took part. So I think that the old English jugs and mugs and bowls are true art, with something of the antique classical spirit in them. For truly you can read the hearts of the folk for whom they were made. They have rendered the interpretation easy by writing their minds upon them. The motto, Prosperity to the flock, for instance, is a good one still. And drink fair, don't swear, he said, a very pleasant and suitable admonition. As I looked at the jug, the cat coughed under the table. Ah, said Mrs. Luckett, when the cat coughs the cold goes through the house. Hillary, returning to the subject of the cheese, said that the best was made when the herd grazed on old pastures. There was a pasture field of his, which it was believed had been grazed for fully two hundred years. When he was a boy, the cheese folk made to keep at home for eating often became so hard that, unable to cut it, they were obliged to use a saw. Still longer ago they used to dispatch a special cheese to London in the road wagon. It was made in thin vats, pronounced in the dairy vate, was soft and eaten with radishes. Another hard kind was oval-shaped or like a pear. It was hung up in nets to mature and traded to the West Indies. He looked to see when the moon changed in Moore's Almanac, which was kept for ready reference on the mantelpiece. Next to Bible and prayer book comes old Moore's rubric in the farmhouse, that rubric which declares the Vox Stellarum. There are old folk who still regret the amendments in the modern issue and would have back again the table which laid down when the influence of the constellations was concentrated in each particular limb and portion of the body. In his oaken cabinet Hillary had Moore from the beginning of the century, or farther back, for his fathers had saved them before him. On the narrow margins during his own time he had jotted down notes of remarkable weather in the events of the farm and could tell you the very day cow beauty calved twenty years ago. I thought the ale good, but Hillary was certain it was not equal to what he used to brew himself before he had so large an acreage to look after, and indeed before the old style of farm life went out of fashion. Then he used to sit up all night watching, for brewing is a critical operation, and, looking out of doors now and then to pass the long hours, saw the changes of the sky, the constellations rising in succession one after another, and felt the slight variations of the wind and of moisture and dryness in the air which predict the sunshine or the shower of the coming day. He seemed to have thought a good deal in those lonely watches, but he passed it off by reference to the malting. Barn barley was best for malting, i.e. that which had been stored in a barn and therefore kept perfectly dry, for ricks sometimes get wet before they can be thatched, but barn barley was not often come by nowadays as one by one the old barns disappeared, burned perhaps and not rebuilt. He had ceased to brew for some time. Sicily could, however, remember sipping the sweet wort, which is almost too sweet for the palate after childhood. They still baked a batch of bread occasionally, but not all that was required. Sicily superintended the baking, passing the barn through a sieve with a wisp of clean hay at it. The hay takes off any sourness, ensures it being perfectly sweet. She knew when the oven was hot enough by the gauge brick. This particular brick, as the heat increased, became spotted with white, and when it had turned quite white the oven was ready. The wood embers were raked out with a scraper and the mullkin being wetted cleaned out the ashes. The looks like a Gert mullkin is a common term of reproach among 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 taste her black current gin, which was very good. Presently we went into the orchard to look at the first apple tree out in bloom. While there a magpie flew across the meadow, and as I watched it Mrs. Luckett advised me to turn my back and not look too long in that direction. Four, said she, one magpie is good luck, but two mean sorrow, and if you should see three, goodness, something awful might happen. One lovely June afternoon as Hillary and I strolled about the fields, we passed some lambs at play. Lambs is never good eating without sunshine, said Hillary. Not only wheat and plants generally, but animals also are affected by the absence of sun, so that the epicure should hope as devoutly as the farmer that the dull and overcast season of 1879 will not be repeated. Hillary's remark was founded upon the experience of long years. Such experience as is only to be found in farmhouses where kindreds succeed each other and hand down practical observations from father to son. The thistles were showing rather strongly in the barley, the result of last year's rain and the consequent impossibility of proper clearing. These thistles he thought came from portions of the root and not from seed. Last year all the farmers had been latter Lamas men. The first of August is Lamaste, and in the old time if a farmer had neglected his work and his haymaking was still unfinished on August 13th in the old style, he was called and reproach a latter Lamas man. But last year, 1879, they were all alike, and the hay was about till September. Yet Hillary could recollect it being all done by St. Swithins July 15th. Sometimes, however, the skilled and careful agriculturist did not succeed so well as the lazy one. Once in seven years they came a sloven's year, according to the old folk, when the sloven had a splendid crop of wheat and hardly knew where to put it. Such a harvest was as if a man had gone round his farm with the sun in one hand and the watering pot in the other. Last year there had been nearly as much maltern or wild chamomile and willow-in, convolvus and buckwheat, as crop, and he did not want to see the colt's tail in the sky so often again. The colt's tail is a cloud with a bushy appearance like a ragged fringe and portends rain. I remark that it was curious how thunderstorms sometimes returned on the same day of the week and at the same hour for a month running. Hillary 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 his fager declared it came on to thundered day after day in the afternoon just as he took his yoke off his shoulders. Such heavy and continuous downpour not only laid the crops, but might spoil them all together, for laid barley had been known to sprout there and then, and was of course totally spoiled. It was a mistake to associate thunder solely with hot weather. The old folk used to say that it was never too cold a thunder and never too warm to snow. A sweet yet faintly pungent odor came on the light breeze over the next field. A scent like clover, but with a slight reminiscence of the bean-flower. It arose from the yellow flower of the hopped trefoil. Honey sometimes has a flavor which resembles it. The hopped trefoil is a favorite crop for sheep, but Hillary said it was too soft for horses. The poppies were not yet out in the wheat. When in full bloom some of the cottagers gathered the scarlet flowers in great quantities and from them make poppy wine. This liquor has a fine color and is very heady, and those who make it seem to think much of it. Upon the hills where furs grows plentifully the flowers are also collected and a dye extracted from them. Ribbons can thus be dyed a bright yellow, but it requires a large quantity of the flowers. A little farther a sheep-dog looked at us from the gateway, and on coming nearer we found the shepherd busy engaged in cutting the feet of a sheep one by one with a keen knife. They had got the foot-rot down in the meadow. They did not suffer from it on the arable uplands where folded, and the shepherd was now applying a caustic solution. Every shepherd has his own peculiar specific, which he believes to be the only certain remedy. Tar as used in the sheepfold, just as it used to be when sweet Dousebell went forth to gather honeysuckle and ladies' smock nearly three centuries since, for the shepherd, with whom she fell in love, carried his tarbox on his broad-belt hung. So, too, he leered his sheep as he himlised 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 that district did not seem of such good breeds, nor were there so many varieties as at present. They were mostly sheep-dogs, or mongrels of the sheep-dog caste, for little attention was paid to breed. Dogs of this kind, with shaggy black coats and stump-tails, could be found at most farms, and were often of a savage disposition, so much so that it was occasionally necessary to break their teeth that they might not injure the sheep. From his description the dogs of the present day must be far superior. Indeed, there seems to have been no variety of dog and no purity of breed at that time in that neighborhood, meaning, of course, outside the gamekeeper's kennels or in the hounds used for hunting. Shepherds like to keep their flock and hurdles folded as much as possible, that they may not rub their wool off and so get a ragged appearance. Once, now and then, in wet weather, the ground becomes so soft that a flock will not move, their narrow feet sinking so deeply in the mud. It is then necessary to dog them out, to set the dog at them, and the excitement, fright, and exertion have been known to kill one or more of the flock. Passing on to the lower grounds, we entered the meadows where the men were at the hay cart. The cart horses were glittering brazen ornaments crescent-shaped in front of the neck and one upon the forehead. Have these ornaments a history? The carters and plowmen have an old world vocabulary of their own, saying toward for anything near or leaning toward you, and vrammerds for the reverse. Healed or yield, again, is plowmen's language. When the newly sown corn does not yield or yield, it requires the herald. In the next field, which the mowers had but just cut, the men were tedding, i.e., spreading the swath with their prongs. Hillary said that hay was a safe speculation if a man could afford to wait. For every few years it was sure to be extremely dear, so that old people said, old hay, old gold. As we returned toward Luckett's Place, he pointed out to me a distant house upon which he said slates had been first used in that neighborhood. Fifty or sixty years since no slates were to be seen there, and when they began to be introduced the old folks manifested great opposition. They said slate would never last, the moss would eat through it, and so cause holes. And in fact some of the slate that was brought up did decay and become useless. But that was, of course, an inferior kind quite different to what is now employed. And so comparatively short of period has everything, even the mode of roofing, changed that the introduction of slates is still in many places within the memory of man. Hillary had still a lingering preference for thatch, and though he could not deny the utility of slate, his inclination was obviously in favor of straw. He assured me that good straw from a good harvest, for there was much difference in it, well laid on by a good thatcher, had been known to keep out the weather for forty-five years. We looked into the garden at the place where Hillary particularly called my attention to the kidney beans. For, said he, if the kidney beans run up the sticks well with strong vine, then it would be a capital hoppier. On the contrary, if they were weak and poor, the hops would prove a failure. Thus one plant was an index to the other, though they might be growing a hundred miles apart, both being particularly sensitive to the same atmospheric influences. In a distant tree beyond the rickyard there was something hanging in the branches that I could not quite make out. It was the limb of a dead horse. A cart-horse belonging to a neighboring farmer had met with an accident and had to be killed. When, according to old custom, portions were sent round to each adjacent farmstead for the dogs which then had a feast. Thus, said Hillary, according to the old saw, the death of a horse is the life of a dog. CHAPTER IX THE WATERMELL FIELD NAMES Our time be a most gone by, said the miller, looking up from his work and laying aside the mill-peck for a moment as he rubbed his eyes with his white and greasy sleeve. From a window of the old mill by Oakburn I was gazing over the plain, green with rising wheat, where the titlarks were singing joyously in the sunshine. A millstone had been thrown off on some full sacks like cushions, and Tybald, the miller, was dexterously pecking the grooves afresh. The mill-peck is a little tool like a double adze or perhaps rather like two chisels set in the head of a mallet. Though age was stealing upon him, Tybald's eye and hand were still true and his rude sculpture was executed with curious precision. The grooves, which are the teeth of the millstone, radiate from the center, but do not proceed direct to the edge. They slant slightly. There being many as can do this job, he said, I can put in sixteen or twenty to the inch. These old French burrs be the best stone. They be hard, but they be mild and takes the peck well. Pondres, as the millstones appear, they are capable of being set so that their surfaces 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 the furrows to the edge. Now and then the miller feels the grain as it emerges with his pudgy thumb and finger and knows by touch how the stones are grinding. It is perceptibly warm at the moment it issues forth from the friction, yet the stones must not grind too close, or they will kill the wheat, which should be only just cracked, so as to skin well. To attain this end, first the surfaces of the stones must be level, and the grooves must be exactly right, and secondly the upper stone must be hung at the exact distance above the other to the smallest fraction of an inch. The upper millstone is now sometimes balanced with lead, which, tipaldes said, was not the case of old. We used to have a good trade at this mill, he continued, as he resumed his pecking. But our time be a most gone by. We be too far away up in these here downs. There, listen to he! A faint hollow whistle came up over the plain, and I saw a long white cloud of steam miles away, swiftly gliding above the trees beneath which in the cutting the train was running. That be the express. It be that their steam as have done for us. Everything got to go according to that their whistle. They sets the church clock by he. The big London mills be as driven by steam as does most of the work, and this here foreign wheat, as it comes over in the steamers, puts the market down, so as we yent got a chance to buy up a lot and keep it till the price gets better. I seed in the paper as the rate has gone down a penny. The steamers be going to ship the American wheat to penny a bushel cheaper, so it be much good for Hillary to talk about his wheat. I thinks that'll about do. He laid down the mill-peck, and took his mill-staff to prove the work he had done. This was made of well-seasoned oak, two pieces put together so that they should not warp. He rubbed the edge with rattle and placing the mill-staff on the stone, turned it about on its shorter axis. Where the rattle left its red mark, more pecking would be required. There was but one small spot, and this he quickly put right. Even the seasoned oak, however, is not always true, and to be certain on the point, Tybold had a mill-staff prover. This is of rigid steel, and the staff is put on it. If any daylight is visible between the two, the staff is not accurate, so delicately must these great stones be adjusted for successful grinding. The largest of them are four feet, two inches, and diameter, and dangerous things they are to move, for if the men do not all heave or give at the same moment, the stone may slip, and the edge will take off a row of fingers as clean as the guillotine. Tybold, of course, had his joke about that part of the machinery which is called the damsel. He was a righteous man enough as millers go, but your miller was always a bit of a knave, nor could he forbear from boasting to me how he had been a half-hour too soon for Hilary, last over Borough Market. He said the vast water-wheel was of Elm, but it would not last so long up so near the springs. Upon a river or brook the wheel might endure for thirty years and grind corn for a generation. His mill-pond was close to the spring-ed and the spring-water ate into the wood and caused it to decay much quicker. The spokes used to be mortised in. Now they used flanges, ironwork having almost destroyed the business of the ancient millwright. Of all manual workers probably the old style of millwright employed the greatest variety of tools and was the cleverest in handling them. There seemed no end to the number of his chisels and augers, some of the augers of immense size. In wintertime the millwright made the millstones, for the best stones are not in one piece but composed of forty or fifty. The French burrs, which Tybald preferred, come over in fragments, and these are carefully fitted together and stuck with plaster of Paris. Such work required great nicety. The old millwright was in fact a kind of artist in his handiwork. I could not help regretting, as Tybald dilated on these things, that the village millwright no longer existed. The care, the skill, the forethought, the sense of just proportion he exhibited quite took him out of the ranks of the mere workmen. He was a master of his craft and the mind he put into it made him an artist. Tybald went on that he did not care for the derby or Welsh millstones. These were in one piece, but they were too hard for the delicate grinding necessary to make fine flour needed for good bread. They answered best for barley-meal. Now the French burr was not only hard but mild, and seemed to feel the corn as it crushed it. A sack of wheat lost four pounds 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's tenets and the olden times were forced to have their corn ground at the Lord's mill, the toll was liable to be abused in a cruel manner, hence the universal opinion that the miller must be a nave. Even in much more recent times, when the laborers took part of their wages in flour, there is said to have been a great deal of sleight of hand in using the toll box, and the miller's thumb grew fat by continually dipping into other folk sacks. But Tybald had an argument even here, for he said that men nowadays never grew so strong as they used to do when they brought their own wheat to be ground at the mill, and when they made their bread and baked it at home. His own father once carried the fattest man in the parish 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 fifty-six pound weight in each hand. He himself remembered when Hillary used to be the strongest man in the place. When the young men met together, they contested who should lift the heaviest weight, and he had seen Hillary raise five hundred weight, fair lifting with hands only, and without any mechanical appliance. Hillary, too, used to write his name with a carpenter's flat cedar pencil on the whitewash ceiling of the brew-house, holding the while a half-hundred weight of iron hung on his little finger. The difficulty was to get the weight up, lifting it fairly from the ground. You could lift it very well halfway, but it was just when the arm was bent that the tug came to get it past the hip, after which it would go up comparatively easy. Now this great strength was not the result of long and special training, or indeed of any training at all. It came naturally from outdoor life, outdoor work, plain living, chiefly baking, and good bread baked at home. At the present time men ate the finest and whitest of bread, but there was no good in it. Folk grew tall and big, taller than they used to be, he thought, and they could run quick and so forth, but there was no stamina, no power of endurance, of withstanding exposure like there was formerly. The mere measure of a man, he was certain, had nothing to do with his strength, and he could never understand how it was that the army folk would have men precisely so high and so many inches round. Just then he was called away to a carter who had brought up his team and wagon at the door, and as he was gone some time I went up under the roof once there was a beautiful view down over the plain. The swifts, which had but just arrived, were rushing through the sky in their head-bong way. They would build presently in the roof. The mill was built at the mouth of a coom on the verge of the downs. The coom was narrow and steep as if nature had begun cutting with a view to tunneling through the mass of the hills. At the upper end of the coom the spring issued, and at the lower was the mill pond. There is something peculiarly human in a mill, something that carries the mind backwards into the past, the days of crossbow and lance and armor. Possibly there was truth in Tybald's idea that men grow larger in the present time without corresponding strength. For is it not on record that some, at least of the armor preserved in collections, will not fit those who have tried it on in recent times? Yet the night for whom it was originally made, though less in stature and size, may have had much more vigor in power of endurance. The ceaseless range last year sent the farmers in some places to the local millers once more somewhat in the old style. Part of their wheat proved so poor that they could not sell it at market, and rather than waste it they added ground at the village mills with the idea of consuming as much of the flour as possible at home. But the flour was so bad as to be uneatable. As I parted with Tybald that morning he whispered to me as he leaned over the thatch to say a good word for him with Hillary about the throw of oak that was going on in one part of the chase. If he was to speak to he he could speak with a steward, and maybe I could get a stick or two at a bargain with a wink. Tybald did a little in buying and selling timber, and indeed in many other things. Pleased as he was to show me the mill, and to talk about it by the hour together, the shrewd old fellow still had an eye to business. After a while, in walking along the footpaths of the meadows and by the woods, a feeling grew upon me that it would be pleasant to know something of their history. It was true inquiring about the age of the rickery that this thought took shape. No one could tell me how long the rooks had built there, nor were there any passing allusions and old papers to fix the date. There was no tradition of it among the oldest people. All they knew was that the rooks had always been there, and they seemed to indicate a belief that the rooks would always remain. It seemed to me, however, that the sight of their city was slowly travelling, and in a few generations might be found on the other side of the chase. Some of the trees where the nests were most numerous were decaying, and several were already deserted. As the trees died, the rooks moved on to the next clump, and thus gradually shifted their city. This inquiry led to further reflections about the past of the woods and meadows. Besides the birds, the flowers, and animals that had been there for so many, many centuries, there were the folk in the scattered homesteads whose ancestors might have left some record. In these times history is concerned only with great cities or strategical positions of worldwide renown. Interest is concentrated on a siege of Paris or a march toward Constantinople. In days of yore battles were often fought in or near what seemed to us mere villages. Little places whose very names are uncertain and exact sight unassertainable were the centres of strife. Some of these places are buried under the sword as completely as Herculaneum under the lava. The green turf covers them. The moor passes over with the scythe, the nose not of them. Hillary had observed in one of his meadows that the turf turned brown or burnt up in squares during hot summer weather. This he conjectured to be caused by the shallowness of the soil over some ancient foundations. And some years before he had had the curiosity to open a hole 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 a village having once existed there. At present there were no houses nearer. The place, whatever it was, had disappeared. The mention of this meadow led to some conversations about the names of the fields which are often very curious. Such names as Lee, Lees, Croft, and so on are readily explained, but what was the original meaning of the Cossicles? Then there were Zacharshook and Conagers, Cheesecake, Hawks, Reels, Purly, Strong Bowls, Thrupp, Lane, Sanits, Gaston, Wexels, Wernolds, Glacemere, several Hams, Haddens, and Weddingtons, Slates, and so on, and a Two-Locks. These were quickly put down. Scores of still more singular names might be collected in every parish. It is the meadows and pastures which usually bear these designations. The Ploughed Fields are often only known by their acreage, as the Ten Acre Peace or the Twelve Acres. Some of them are undoubtedly the personal names of former owners, but in others ancient customs, allusions to traditions, fragments of history, or languages now extinct may survive. There was a meadow where deep trenches could be traced, green now, but once clearly a moat. But there was not even a tradition about it. On the downs overlooking the Idavers was an earthwork or entrenchment of which no one knew anything. Hillary believed there was an old book, a history of Overburrow Town, which might perhaps contain some information, but where it could be found he did not know. After some consideration, however, he thought there might be a copy at the crown, once an old posting in at Overburrow. That was about the only place where I should be likely to find it. So one warm summer day I walked into Overburrow, following a path over the downs whose short sward affords the best walking in the world. At the crown, now no more an inn but a hotel, the archway was blocked up with two hand-trucks piled with trunks and portmanteaus, the property of a commercial gentleman, and just about to be conveyed to the station. What were the ostler and the boots and the errand boys all hanging about for their fees? It was a push to enter, and the waiters within seemed to equally occupy the passage, fetching the dustcoats and walking sticks and flourishing coat brushes. Seeing a door marked Coffee Room, I took refuge, and having ordered lunch and began to consider how I should open my subject for the landlord, who was clearly as much up to the requirements of modern life as his house had been by a London terminus. Time tables and guilt-stamped covers strewed the tables. Wine lists stood on edge. A card of the local omnibus to the station was stuck up where all could see it. The daily papers hung over the arm of a cozy chair. The furniture was new. The whole place, it must be owned, extremely comfortable, and the service good. But it was town and not country. Today and not the olden time, and I did not feel courage enough to ask for the book. I believe I should have left the place without mentioning, but, fortunately, looking around the room while lunch was repaired, I found it in the bookcase, where there was a strange mixture of the modern and antique. I took down the history from between rich's thin gray ruins of Babylon and a yellow-bound railway novel. Toward the close of the eighteenth century, a learned gentleman had taken much pains to gather together this account of the town. He began with the story of Brutus, and showed that one of the monarchs descended from the illustrious Trojan founded a city here. Some fossil shells, indeed, that had been dug up, furnished him with conclusive proof that the deluge had not left the site uncovered, since no-how else could they have got there. An argument commonly accepted in his day. Thus he commenced, like the monks themselves, with the beginning of the world, but then came a wide gap down to Domesday Book. The hides and yardlands held by the conquerors, how much was in domain, how many acres were wood and how many meadow, the number of survey, and what the mill paid, were duly translated and recorded. The descent of the manors through the monasteries and the persons who purchased them at the dissolution filled several pages, and was supplemented with a charter recognizing rites of infang and outfang, a size of bread and ale, and so forth. Finally there was a list of mayors, which someone had carried on and manuscript on a fly leaf through within ten years of date. There was an air of precision in the exact sentences, and the writer garnished his tail with frequent quotations from Latin writers. In the midst was a woodcut of a plant having no sort of relevancy to the subject matter, for which he returned thanks for the loan of the block. But he had totally omitted his own times. These quotations, these lists and charters, the extracts from Domesday, read dry and formal, curious and yet not interesting. Had he described the squires and yeomen at townspeople of his own day, their lives and manner of thinking, how invaluable and pleasing his work would have been. Hillary said that in these little country towns years ago people had to be very careful how they acted, lest they should offend some local magnate. He remembered the tradesmen telling him how once he had gone into great disgrace for putting a new knocker on his private side door, without first asking permission and sending round to obtain the opinion of an old gentleman. This person had nothing whatever to do with the property, but lived retired and ruled as neighbors with a rod of iron. The old knocker was quite worn out, but the new one had been scarcely fastened on when the unfortunate owner was summoned to the presence of the irate old gentleman, who demanded with great wrath what on earth he meant by setting himself up above his station in this way. It was only by a humble answer and by begging the old gentleman to walk down and look at the discarded knocker, promising that it should be replaced, if he thought proper, that it could be appeased. A man then hardly dared appear in a new hat, without first suggesting the idea to his social superior. CHAPTER 10 THE KUMBARAM CONCLUSION Where is two o'clock Bush, said Sicily, pointing to a large Hawthorne? The shepherds looked from the corner of the entrenchment, and if the sun is over that bush, they know it is two o'clock. She was driving me in the pony-trap over the downs, and we were going to call on Mrs. Luckett's brother, who had a farm among the hills. He had not been down to Luckett's place for more than twelve months, and Sicily was resolved to make him promise to come. Though they may be in reality much attached and affectionate, country folk are apt to neglect even the nearest and dearest. The visit is put off from month to month, then comes the harvest, and nothing else can be thought of, and the longer the lapse, the more difficult is the remedy. The footpath of friendship, says the ancient British triad, if not frequently traveled, becomes overgrown with briars. Those who live by the land forget the passage of the years. A year is but a harvest. After the plowing and the sowing and cleaning, the reaping and thatching and threshing, what is there left of the twelve-month? It is gone like a day. Thus it is that the farmer talks of twenty years since, as if it was only last week, and seems unable to grasp the flight of time till it is marked and emphasised by some exceptional occurrence. Sicily meant to wake her uncle from this slumber. We started early on a beautiful July morning, partly to avoid the heat and partly because Sicily wished to be away when young Aaron shortened the tails of the puppies in the rickyard. This he did in the old-fashioned way, with his teeth. Besides, we thought that, if we waited till later, Uncle Bennett might be gone to market at Overborough. We passed several farmers, leaning or sitting on the stiles by the road, watching for a friend to come along and give them a lift into town. Some of them had waited like this every market morning for years. There were fewer on the road than usual at being near harvest, when many do not so much care to leave home. Upon reaching the foot of the downs, Sicily left the highway and entered a narrow lane without hedges, but worn low between the banks of Chock or White Rubble. The track was cut up with ruts so deep that the bed of the pony trap seemed almost to touch the ground. As we went rather slowly along this awkward place, we could see the wild tine growing on the bank at the side. Presently we got on the slope of the hill, and at the summit passed the entrenchment and the shepherd's timepiece. Thence our track ran along the ridge and on the short, sweet turf where there were few or no ruts, and these easily avoided on that broad open ground. The quick pony now put out his speed and we raced along as smoothly as if the wheels were running on a carpet. Far below, to the right, stretched wheat field after wheat field in a plain between two ranges of the hills. Over the opposite slope, a mile away, came the shadows of the clouds, then down along the corn toward us. Stonechats started from the flints and low bushes we went by. An old crow, it is always an old crow, rose hastily from behind a fence of withered thorn, and a magpie fluttered down the hill to the fields beneath where was a flock of sheep. The breeze of this height made the sunshine pleasant. Sicily said that once some snow lingered in the fos on the entrenchment we had left behind till a hay-making. There was a snowstorm late in the spring, and a drift was formed in the hollow at the bottom of the fos. The weather continued chilly. Sometimes even in June it is chilly, and the flowers seem out of harmony with the temperature. And this drift, though of course it was reduced, did not melt, but became consolidated like ice. A part still remained when the hay-making commenced. The pony now slackened his pace at a sharp ascent, and as he walked up we could hear the short song of the grasshoppers. There was a fur cops at the summit through which the track went. By the gateway as we entered there was a convulvus out. Sicily regretted to see this sign that the sun had reached his greatest height. The tide of summer was full. Beyond the copes we descended by a deep-worn track into a coon bottom, or valley, where there were some cottages. Sicily, 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. Sicily lifted the latch of the door to step in, country fashion, but it was locked, and, hearing the noise, a cat came mewing around the corner. As if they had started out of the ground, a brown-faced boy and a thin girl suddenly appeared, having come through the hedge. They be up to barken, Rickyard, said the boy, so we went on to the next door. It was locked, too, but the key was in the lock outside. Sicily said that was a signal to callers that the wife had only gone out for a few minutes and would return soon. The children had followed us. Where is she? asked Sicily. Herbing on to dipping-place, replied the boy. We went to a third door, and immediately he cried out, Gucks our Fathers, the K's and the Thatch. We looked, and could see the handle of the key sticking out of the Eve over the door. Where are they all, I said. Bill's in the clover, and Joe's in the term-ups, and Jack be at a public gospels, and Bob's with the Ausses, and will they be home to luncheon? said Sicily. No one won't. They won't be home a fortnight. They got their luncheon with them. Is there no one at home in all the place? I inquired. Maybe Farmer Bennet. There'd be nobody in these-year-housen. So we went on to Uncle Bennet's, whose house was hidden by a clump of elms farther down the Coombe. There were cottagers in this lonely hill-hamlet, not only old folk, but young persons, who had never seen a train. They had not had the enterprise or curiosity to walking to Overboro for the purpose. Some of the folk ate snails, the common brown-shelled snail found in the hedges. It has been observed that children who eat snails are often remarkably plump. The method of cooking is to place the snail in its shell on a bar of a grate, like a chestnut. And well- educated people have been known, even in these days, to use the snail as an external medicine for weakly children. Rubbed into the back, or limb, the substance of the snail is believed to possess strengthening virtues. We found Uncle Bennet just taking his lunch in the stone-flagged sitting-room, which, however, had a square of coconut madding. He was getting on in years, but very active. He welcomed us warmly. Still, I thought I detected some uneasiness in his manner. His conscience warned him that Cicely was going to attack him for his remissness. And how was he to defend himself? Without any preliminary, she had once demanded why he had not come down to see them. Mary said he, calling the servant, as if he did not hear her, some ale and the ginger wine and the gray beard. Maybe you'd like a drop of shard, to me. But I declined. She repeated her question, but Uncle Bennet was looking towards me. The woods to be very far, he said. I got some almost ready to cut. Do you hear, cried Cicely angrily. Neese replied to Farmer, turning to her. There's them summer apples as you used to like. There be some ready. Will he have one? I don't want your apples. Why didn't you come down? Ah, that's what you be a-talking about. Yes, that's it. The termites want some rain terrible bad, to me. You need to see the fly a-hopping about them. I hope they will spoil your turnip, said Cicely. You are a very rude man not to answer a lady when she speaks to you. You be a-coming on nicely, Cicely, said he. Have you got air a-gagering yet? How dare you, blushing! Tell me instantly why you have not been to see us. You know how angry it makes me. Well, how was it coming, deliberately? When were you coming? Well, I got to see a man down your way, Cicely. I owes me for a load of straw. Then why don't you come down and get the money? I tell thee I was a-coming. He wants some of our sheep to feed off a meadow. Suppose I must see about it. With a sigh as if the idea of a decision was insupportable. Why didn't you come before? I don't seem to have no time. Farmer's having more time than anybody else. You could have come in June. Bless ye, your father's got hay about. He don't want no strangers to bother him. As if you were a stranger. Why didn't you come in May? Lord bless ye, my dear, in April. Us was main busy a-hoin. In March? I had the rheumatism bad in March. Well then, concluded Cicely, now just change your coat and come today. Jump up in the pony-trap. We will make room. Today, in hopeless bewilderment, his breath quite taken away at the idea of sudden action. Couldn't do it, couldn't do it. Got to go down to thirty-acre corner. Got to get out the reaping machine, and wants oiling, I reckon. Got some new hurdles coming. Specks a chap to call about them lambs. A farmer can always find a score of reasons for doing nothing. Oh, rubbish! cried Cicely, smiling. Nieces be main pert nowadays, said he, shutting one eye and keeping it closed. As much as to say, I won't be driven. Then to me, there won't be many at market today. I am hungry, said Cicely softly. I should like some bread and honey. Ah, should he? In gentler tones. Oh, giddy some. Will it have it in the comb? I got a bit left. She knew his pride in his bees and his honey. Hill farmers still keep large stalks. He brought her a slice of home-baked bread and a piece of comb. She took the comb and her white fingers and pressed the liquid gold from the cells. Delusious sweetness gathered from a thousand flowers making her lips still sweeter. Uncle Bennett offered me a jar full to the brim. Dip your vinger in, said he. Why is the honey on the hill so much nicer, asked Cicely? Well-knowing but drawing him on. It be the clover and the thyme, and some at in the air, there be no hedges from to fly up against, and some carries home a bigger load. How many hives have you, I inquired? Well, let's see, he counted them up, touching a finger for each twenty. There be a three score and sixteen. I have had a six score years 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 the hives. They were all in a row, each protected by large pan-shirts from heavy rain, and placed along beneath the wall of the garden which sheltered them on one side. Uncle Bennett chatted pleasantly about his bees for an hour in wood, I believe, have gossiped all day, notwithstanding that he had so little time for anything. Nothing more was said about the delayed visit, but just as we were on the point of departure, and Cicely had already taken the reins, he said to her, as if it were an afterthought, Tell your mother, I suppose I must look down that way next week. We passed swiftly through the little Hamlet, the children had gathered by a gateway to watch us, though so far from the world they were not all together without a spice of impudence of the city Arab. A tall and portly gentleman from town once chanced to visit this Goombatam on business, and strolled down the street in all the glory of shining boots, large gold watch chain, black coat, and high hat, all the pop of Regent Street doubtless imagining that his grandeur astonished the rustics. A brown young rascal, however, looking him up, he was a tall man, with an air of intelligent criticism, audibly remarked, He be very well up to his ankles, and then a falls off. That evening was one of the most beautiful I remember. We all sat in the garden at Luckett's Place till ten o'clock. It was still light, and it seemed impossible to go indoors. There was a seat under a sycamore tree with honeysuckle climbing over the bars of the back. The spot was near the orchard, but on slightly higher ground. From our feet the meadow sloped down to the distant brook, the murmur of who's stream as it fell over a bay could just be heard. Northwards the stars were pale, the sun seemed so little below the horizon there, that the glow of the sunset and the glow of the dawn nearly meet. But southward shone the dull red star of summer, and terries, seeing while a wheat ripens and the ruddy and golden tints come upon the fruits. Then, nightly describing a low curve, he looks down upon the white shimmering corn, and carries the mind away to the burning sands and palms of the far south. In the light and color and brilliance of an English summer we sometimes seemed very near those tropical lands. So still was it, that we heard an apple fall in the orchard, thud on the sward, blighted perhaps and right before its time. Under the trees as the months went on there would rise heaps of the wind faults collected there to wait for the cider mill. The mill was the property of two or three of the village folk, a small band of adventurers now grown old, who every autumn went round from farm to farm grinding the produce of the various orchards. They sometimes poured a quantity of the acid juice into the mill to sharpen it, as cutting a lemon will sharpen a knife. The great press, with its unwieldy screw and levers, squeezed the liquor from the cut-up apples and the horsehair bags, a cumbersome apparatus, but not without interest, for surely so rude an engine must date far back in the past. The old fellows who brought it and put it up with such slow deliberate motions were far, far past the joy with which all the children about the farm hailed its arrival. With grave faces and indifferent manner they ground the apples and departed as slowly and deliberately as they came. Verily men of the autumn harbingers of the fall of the year. As I dreamed with a honeysuckle over my shoulder in Antares southwards, Hilary talked at intervals about his wheat, as usual, and the weather, but I only caught fragments of it. All the signs were propitious, and as it had been a fine harvest under similar conditions before people said it would be fine this time. But unlike the law the weather acknowledged no precedent, and nobody could tell, though folk now and then thought they knew everything. How all things had changed since a queen ascended the throne. Not long since Hilary was talking with a laborer, an elderly man, who went to the feast in Overburrow town on the day of the coronation. The feast was held in the marketplace, and the puddings, said the old fellow regretfully, were so big they were brought in on hand-barrels. It was difficult since he himself remembered even to learn the state of the markets, so few newspapers came into country places that before a service on Sundays the farmers gathered around anybody in the churchyard who was known to take in a paper to get particulars from this fortunate individual. Letters rarely came to the farmhouse door then. The old postman made a very good thing of his office. People were so eager for news and it was easy to take a magpie glance at a newspaper, so he called at the butchers before he started out. An exchange for a peep at the paper got a little bit of griskin or a chop, and at the farmhouse as he passed they gave him a few eggs and at the ends a drop of gin. Thus a dozen at least read scraps before it reached the rightful owner. If anything very extraordinary had happened, he would shout it out as he went through the hamlet. Hillary said he well remembered being up on the roof of the house one morning, mending the thatch, when suddenly a voice, it was the postman, cried from the road, Royal exchange burned down. In this way news got about before the present facilities were afforded. But some of the old folks still regretted the change and believed that we should someday be punished for our worship of steam. Steam had brought us to rely on foreign countries for our corn, and a day 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 were prone to prophesy disaster and failure of all kinds. Mrs. Luckett chimed in here and said that the modern ways were not all improvements. The girls now were so fond of gating about. This was a hint for Cicely, who loved to change, and yet was deeply attached at the old home. She rose at this, doubtless pouting, but it was too dusky to see, and went indoors, and presently from the open window came the notes of her piano. As she played, I dreamed again, till presently Mrs. Luckett began to argue with Hillary that the shrubs about the garden ought to be cut and trimmed. Hillary said he liked to see the shrubs and trees growing freely. He objected to cut and trim them. For, said he, God made nothing tidy. Just then Cicely called us to supper. End of Chapter 10 End of Round About a Great Estate by Richard Jeffries