have indeed heard of a thatch woven by the yard, needing simply to be put on like a cape, but we were not disposed to be severe on the more primitive method while the labourers were so merry over it. Then there was the hen, with her latest brood, making a proportionate fuss about them. The turkeys, with their family train, were parading and feeding in the stubble, and carrying on their morning conversation. When we crossed the next stile there was a flapping of wings from the cloud of pigeons that rose from the furrows; and further on were the geese, full of noisy demonstrations against us. There was a man there, too, whose occupation I did not like. He was strewing straw and chaff and dry rubbish of weeds over the surface, and trailing tar here and there over the whole. He was not going to burn the stubbles to-day, we hoped. Why yes; he did not believe there were any birds there, and his master would be wanting the field by the time it could be ready for the plough. He was induced, however, to wait a day or two. Nelson could not conceive of such barbarism as burning the surface when there were implements which, as he had seen, could dig up and turn down the stubble with the utmost precision. We advised him to turn and ask the man, curious to see whether any other reason would be given than that his master had always done it, and the old master before him. This reason was given, but another with it, that the land had been very foul with weeds and worm and fly, and the burning would destroy all bad seeds and eggs.
We were old-fashioned folks, I admitted, and asked my companions to stand a moment and listen to one proof of it. From the barn on our left we heard the measured, dull sound of the flail, so familiar to the memory of elderly people, but so seldom heard now, except in primitive districts. I never hear it without feeling like a child again, watching the swing of the weapon and its effect on the sheaf below, as I have often done for hours together. The flail does not hold such a place in literature as the sickle, but it will be laid by in tradition beside it.
Now for sport in earnest! I know where we are, and so do the dogs. I wonder whether it is true that the son of the great Earl of Northumberland, in Queen Elizabeth’s time, was the first person who made a dog set for partridges. If so, he was the inventor of a very pretty spectacle. If it is also true that no birds were ever shot flying till the last century, sportsmen must have had a poor chance, unless partridges abounded as we now see them in the Holy Land. There they run out from the artichokes or the corn under your horse’s feet, till you grudge their numbers. We may be very well satisfied to-day, however. We become silent, and watch our dogs, and in a minute or two are deep in the business of the day.
It was truly a charming day, from that moment onwards. We were not all equally good shots; but among us we bagged enough game for our credit; and we cared more for the ramble and the sport than the fame of killing so many birds. The pursuit of magnitude, the love of the monstrous, has entered into even the sportsman’s amusement, to vulgarise it. To stand still, or nearly so, and shoot so many hundreds of birds put up before you, is no pleasure to the true sportsman. He turns from the battue to enjoy nature and not the mere act of slaughter, which the butcher himself would not undertake, except as the business of his life. To prove and enjoy his skill as a marksman, and relish the dainty incidents of the fowler’s pursuit, is the sportsman’s treat on the 1st of September; and a thorough treat it was to us this day.
After a couple of hours we came upon the student of the company at the Hall, sitting on a stile, with a book on his hand. His finger was between the closed leaves, however; and I suspect the great poem of nature was more to his taste on this day than the deepest reasoning or even the highest aspiration presented in a form which would do as well at home. He had been quietly sitting between two fires, and it was wonderful that he had been winged by neither. We crossed the path of his party, compared notes, and took our several ways. An hour further, and we saw a group of women seated on a grassy knoll, a very conspicuous seat. By this I knew that it was my own family, my wife being of opinion that the most probable death for herself is being shot under a hedge by her husband, who is fond of having her near at hand, but apt to trust to her good sense where to go. Her good sense has this time perched herself and her children where none but a wilful murderer could shoot them. Master Harry hung out his mother’s handkerchief on a stick as a flag, and waved us to our luncheon; and then he came scampering down, to learn whether our party would go up to them or they should come down to us. For the sake of the grass, and the chance of a breeze, we would go to them.
There was no breeze; but there was fresh grass, and a gentle slope, and an exquisite landscape, besides the welcome sandwiches and sherry. We could see the park deer like a moving cloud-shadow on the slopes. The crests of the heights beyond peered out like veritable mountain-tops above the horizontal strata of mists which lay poised in the air even now, ready to descend in the chill evening. Where the plough was making a fallow in the nearer fields, the stares collected in a flock. From the wood behind us a hare started, and went under cover again with a circuit. There were no doubt many near us; for this is the season for them to assemble, so that the early labourer may see a score of them sitting round a single field. There was something in the atmosphere, some lingering of the morning vapour, which caused an impression of distance by marking gradations in the woods and ridges in the hills, thus filling up the general outlines with a long perspective of distances. Residents in a mountainous region are well aware that the ridges seem to be multiplied in misty weather, not so thick as to obscure them. Sketch a view in bright weather, or on a dull day which is yet clear, and you draw perhaps a triple range of heights. Come again on a morning or evening of light mists, and you see so many ridges that they are like the folds of a garment, and which make confusion in a picture, unless painted by a master hand. It