for a supply of goods, and will return heavily laden. No town-bred
woman, however poor, would dress so plainly as these cottage matrons.
Their daughters who go with them have caught the finery of the town, and
they do not mean to stay in the cottage.

There is a bleak arable field, on somewhat elevated ground, not very far
from the same old barn. In the corner of this field for the last two or
three years a great pit of roots has been made: that is, the roots are
piled together and covered with straw and earth. When this mound is
opened in the early spring a stout, elderly woman takes her seat beside
it, billhook in hand, and there she sits the day through trimming the
roots one by one, and casting those that she has prepared aside ready to
be carted away to the cattle.

A hurdle or two propped up with stakes, and against which some of the
straw from a mound has been thrown, keeps off some of the wind. But the
easterly breezes sweeping over the bare upland must rush round and over
that slight bulwark with force but little broken. Holding the root in
the left hand, she turns it round and slashes off the projections with
quick blows, which seem to only just miss her fingers, laughing and
talking the while with two children who have brought her some
refreshment, and who roll and tumble and play about her. The scene might
be bodily removed and set down a hundred miles away, in the midst of a
western county, and would there be perfectly at one with the
surroundings.

Here, as she sits and chops, the east wind brings the boom of trains
continually rolling over an iron bridge to and from the metropolis. She
was there two successive seasons to my knowledge; she, too, had the
stamp of the land upon her.

The broad sward where the white-haired shepherd so often stands watching
his sheep feeding along to this field, is decked in summer with many
flowers. By the hedge the agrimony frequently lifts its long stem,
surrounded with small yellow petals. One day towards autumn I noticed a
man looking along a hedge, and found that he was gathering this plant.
He had a small armful of the straggling stalks, from which the flowers
were then fading. The herb had once a medicinal reputation, and, curious
to know if it was still remembered, I asked him the name of the herb and
what it was for. He replied that it was agrimony. "We makes tea of it,
and it is good for the flesh," or, as he pronounced it, "fleysh."

WHEATFIELDS

The