them than
those lights, which floated away if any were bold enough to approach
them, like glorified balls of that thistledown of which children
divine what's o'clock.

At the other side of the Ten Acres was a fantastic corner of grass,
which was always a miniature meadow. There swung the scarlet and black
butterflies which have flown into Fairyland, and there the corn-crake
built her nest in the grass. It was a famous corner for
bird's-nesting, which with us took no crueller form than liking to
part the thick leaves to peep at the pretty, perturbed mother-thrush
on her clutch. Sometimes we peeped too often, and she flew away and
left the eggs cold. We saw the world from that corner, for one could
see through the hedge on to the road by lying low where the roots of
the hedge-row made a thinness. We should not have cared about this if
it were not that we could look, unseen ourselves, at the infrequent
passer-by, for the hedge grew luxuriantly. Further down it became
partly a clay bank, and there on the coarse grass used to hang
snail-shells of all sizes, and, as I remember them, of shining gold
and silver. The inhabitant was the drawback to all that beauty, yet
when we found an empty house, it was cold, dull, and with the sheen
vanished.

Across the road was the moat-field, the great fascination of which was
in the wild hill that gave it its name. What the moat originally was I
know not. I think, now, it must have been a gravel-hill, for it was
full of deep gashes, of pits and quarries, run over by briar, alight
with furze-bushes. It must have been long disused, for the hedge that
was set around it--to keep the cattle out, perhaps--was tall and
sturdy, and grew up boldly towards the trees that studded it at
intervals. There was no other entry to it except by gaps we made in
the close hedge, and, wriggling through these, we climbed among briars
and all kinds of vegetation that made a miniature jungle overhead.
Near the top we emerged on stunted grass, with the wide sky over us,
and before us the champaign country stretching to the plains of
Meath, and the smoke of the city, and the misty sea. Southwards there
were the eternal hills which grow so dear to one, yet never so
intimate that they have not fresh exquisite surprises in store. We
threaded the moat by paths between the furze, on the golden
honey-hives of which fluttered moths like blue turquoise. The
dragon-fly was there, and the lady-bird and little beetles in e