e figure,
hatless and rarely coated in any weather, dotting from foot to foot, a
bit of stick in one hand, and often a straw in the mouth--he did not
smoke--was familiar in the yard where he turned the handle of the
separator, or in the fields and cowsheds, from daybreak to dusk, save
for the hours of dinner and tea, which he ate in the farm kitchen,
making sparse and surprising comments. To his peculiar whistles and
calls the cattle and calves, for all their rumination and stubborn
shyness, were amazingly responsive. It was a pretty sight to see them
pushing against each other round him--for, after all, he was as much the
source of their persistence, especially through the scanty winter
months, as a mother starling to her unfledged young.

When the Government issued their request to householders to return the
names of those of military age ready to serve if called on, he heard of
it, and stopped munching to say in his abrupt fashion: "I'll go--fight
the Germans." But the farmer did not put him down, saying to his wife:

"Poor old Tom! 'Twidden be 'ardly fair--they'd be makin' game of 'un."

And his wife, her eyes shining with motherliness, answered: "Poor lad,
he's not fit-like."

The months went on--winter passing to spring--and the slow decking of
the trees and fields began with leaves and flowers, with butterflies and
the songs of birds. How far the little cowman would notice such a thing
as that no one could ever have said, devoid as he was of the vocabulary
of beauty, but like all the world his heart must have felt warmer and
lighter under his old waistcoat, and perhaps more than most hearts, for
he could often be seen standing stock-still in the fields, his browning
face turned to the sun.

Less and less he heard talk of Germans--dogged acceptance of the state
of war having settled on that far countryside--the beggars were not
beaten and killed off yet, but they would be in good time. It was
unpleasant to think of them more than could be helped. Once in a way a
youth went off and ''listed,' but though the parish had given more
perhaps than the average, a good few of military age still clung to life
as they had known it. Then some bright spirit conceived the notion that
a county regiment should march through the remoter districts to rouse
them up.

The cuckoo had been singing five days; the lanes and fields, the woods
and the village green were as Joseph's coat, so varied and so bright the
foliage, from gol