rest hedgerow boughs, were powdered by the dust that had been
stirred over them by hasty vehicles, the same dust as it lay on the road
deadening their footfalls like a carpet; and this, with the aforesaid
total absence of conversation, allowed every extraneous sound to be
heard.

For a long time there was none, beyond the voice of a weak bird singing
a trite old evening song that might doubtless have been heard on the
hill at the same hour, and with the self-same trills, quavers, and
breves, at any sunset of that season for centuries untold. But as they
approached the village sundry distant shouts and rattles reached their
ears from some elevated spot in that direction, as yet screened from
view by foliage. When the outlying houses of Weydon-Priors could just be
described, the family group was met by a turnip-hoer with his hoe on
his shoulder, and his dinner-bag suspended from it. The reader promptly
glanced up.

"Any trade doing here?" he asked phlegmatically, designating the village
in his van by a wave of the broadsheet. And thinking the labourer did
not understand him, he added, "Anything in the hay-trussing line?"

The turnip-hoer had already begun shaking his head. "Why, save the man,
what wisdom's in him that 'a should come to Weydon for a job of that
sort this time o' year?"

"Then is there any house to let--a little small new cottage just a
builded, or such like?" asked the other.

The pessimist still maintained a negative. "Pulling down is more the
nater of Weydon. There were five houses cleared away last year, and
three this; and the volk nowhere to go--no, not so much as a thatched
hurdle; that's the way o' Weydon-Priors."

The hay-trusser, which he obviously was, nodded with some
superciliousness. Looking towards the village, he continued, "There is
something going on here, however, is there not?"

"Ay. 'Tis Fair Day. Though what you hear now is little more than the
clatter and scurry of getting away the money o' children and fools, for
the real business is done earlier than this. I've been working within
sound o't all day, but I didn't go up--not I. 'Twas no business of
mine."

The trusser and his family proceeded on their way, and soon entered the
Fair-field, which showed standing-places and pens where many hundreds of
horses and sheep had been exhibited and sold in the forenoon, but
were now in great part taken away. At present, as their informant had
observed, but little real business remained