he lime and fired the straw,
and so the barn. Something of the same kind happens occasionally on the
river barges. The ducks were in a coop fastened down, so that they could
not swim on the surface of the flood, which passed over and drowned
them. The pigs were floated out of the sty, and in swimming their
sharp-edged hoofs struck their fat jowls just behind the ear at every
stroke till they cut into the artery, and so bled to death. Where he got
this history from I do not know.

One bright October morning (towards the end of the month) Dickon drove
me over to the old place with his fast trotter--our double-barrels
hidden under some sacks in the trap. The keeper was already waiting in
the kitchen, sipping a glass of hot purl; the butler was filling every
pocket with cartridges. After some comparison of their betting-books,
for Dickon, on account of his acquaintance with the training
establishments, was up to most moves, we started. The keeper had to send
a certain number of pheasants and other game to the absent family and
their friends every now and then, and this duty was his pretext. There
was plenty of shooting to be got elsewhere, but the spice of naughtiness
about this was alluring. To reach that part of the wood where it was
proposed to shoot the shortest way led across some arable fields.

Fieldfares and redwings rose out of the hedges and flew away in their
peculiarly scattered manner--their flocks, though proceeding in the same
direction, seeming all loose and disordered. Where the ploughs had been
at work already the deep furrows were full of elm leaves, wafted as they
fell from the trees in such quantities as to make the groove left by the
share level with the ridges. A flock of lapwings were on the clods in an
adjacent field, near enough to be seen, but far beyond gunshot. There
might perhaps have been fifty birds, all facing one way and all
perfectly motionless. They were, in fact, watching us intently, although
not apparently looking towards us: they act so much in concert as to
seem drilled. So soon as the possibility of danger had gone by each
would begin to feed, moving ahead.

The path then passed through the little meadows that joined the wood:
and the sunlight glistened on the dew, or rather on the hoar frost that
had melted and clung in heavy drops to the grass. Here one flashed
emerald; there ruby; another a pure brilliance like a diamond. Under
foot by the stiles the fallen acorns crunched as t