e ice-house flowered; then in the cold months of
early spring the birds came for the ivy-berries.

CHAPTER VI.

A FARMER OF THE OLDEN TIMES.

The winding paths traced by a hare in spring as he roams over 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 towards 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 centre
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 a scent of something that alarmed him, and away
he went full speed: when 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 Hilary coming along on 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.' Hilary came to me, and
we walked together along the waggon-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 the
very mainstay. Now, that crop which he had just left had 'tillered
out' well; but what profit should he get from the many stalks that had
tillered or sprung from each single grain, thus promising a fiftyfold
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 expenses of preparation.

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

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

Last year showed