mp of briar and
thorn-trees, where one found the largest, juiciest blackberries; that
too is gone, but, practically, the fields remain the same. There is
the Ten Acre field, stretching so far as to be weirdly lonely at the
very far end. Every part of it was distinct. You turned to the left as
you entered by a heavy hedge of wild-rose and blackberry. There the
wild convolvulus blew its white trumpet gloriously and violets ran
over the bank under the green veil, and stellaria and speedwell made
in May a mimic heaven. I remember a meadow there, and yet again a
potato-digging, where we picked our own potatoes for dinner and grew
sun-burnt as the brown men and women who required so many cans of
well-water to drink at their work. Where the hedge curved there was a
little passage, through which the dyke-water flowed into the next
field. It was delightful to set little boats of leaf and grass upon
the stream, and to see them carried gaily by the current down that
arcade of green light. Some of the inquisitive ones waded after them,
and emerged wet and muddy in the next field. I preferred to keep the
mystery of the place, and to believe it went a long, long way. For
half the length of the field the water flowed over long grass that lay
face downward in it. To see it you had to lift the grass and the
meadow flowers. Once we were startled there in a summer dusk before
the hay was cut, when all the corn-crakes were crying out that summer
was in the land. As we threaded the meadow aisles, a heavy, dark body
leapt from its lair and into the dyke. It was a badger, we learnt
afterwards, and its presence there gave the place an attractive
fearsomeness. Half-way down, where a boundary hedge had once made two
fields of the Ten Acres, the low hedge changed to a tall wall of
stately thorn trees. Below their feet the stream ran, amber, pellucid,
over a line of transformed pebbles. By this we used to lie for hours,
watching the silver-scaled minnows as they sailed on. At the far end
there was watercress, and over the hedge a strange field, good for
mushrooms, but which bore with us a somewhat uncanny reputation.

Across it you saw the gray house-chimneys of the lonely house reputed
to be haunted. Opposite its door stood an old fort on a little hill, a
noted resort of the fairies. Any summer gloaming at all, you might see
their hundreds of little lamps threading a fantastic measure in and
out on the rath. I never heard that any one saw more of