ee the fishponds netted.

This pond had originally been one of a series, but the others had been
drained and added to the meadows. It was said to be staked at the
bottom to prevent illicit netting; but if so, the stakes by this time
were probably rotten or buried in mud formed from the decaying weeds,
the fallen leaves, and branches which were gradually closing it up. A
few yards from the edge there was a mass of ivy through which a little
brown thatch could be distinguished, and on approaching nearer this
low roof was found to cover the entrance to a cave. It was an ice-house
excavated in the sloping ground or bank, in which, 'when George the
Third was King,' the ice of the ponds had been preserved to cool the
owner's wine in summer. Ice was then a luxury for the rich only; but
when so large a supply arrived from America, a supply increased by
freezing machines, the ice-house lost its importance. The door, once
so jealously closed, was gone, and the dead leaves of last year had
gathered in corners where the winds had whirled them.

The heat of a warm June day seemed still more powerful in this hollow.
The sedges, into which two or three moorhens had retired at my
approach, were still, and the leaves on the boughs overhanging the
water were motionless. Where there was a space free from weeds--a
deeper hole near the bank--a jack basked at the surface in the
sunshine. High above on the hill stood a tall dead fir, from whose
trunk the bark was falling; it had but one branch, which stood out
bare and stark across the sky. There came a sound like distant
thunder, but there were no clouds overhead, and it was not possible to
see far round. Pushing gently through the hawthorn bushes and
ash-stoles at the farther end of the pond, I found a pleasant little
stream rushing swiftly over a clear chalky bottom, hastening away down
to the larger brook.

Beyond it rose a mound and hedgerow, up to which came the meadows,
where, from the noise, the cattle seemed racing to and fro, teased by
insects. Tiny black flies alighting on my hands and face, irritated
the skin; the haymakers call them 'thunder-flies;' but the murmur of
the running water was so delicious that I sat down on a bulging
tree-root, almost over the stream, and listened to the thrushes
singing. Had it been merely warm they would have been silent. They do
not sing in dry sunshine, but they knew what was coming; so that there
is no note so hated by the haymaker as that of