ection both for masters and men.
But in the calm of autumn there is time again to look round. Then white
columns of smoke rise up slowly into the tranquil atmosphere, till they
overtop the tallest elms, and the odour of the burning couch is carried
across the meadows from the lately-ploughed stubble, where the weeds have
been collected in heaps and fired. The stubble itself, short and in
regular lines, affords less and less cover every year. As the seed is now
drilled in, and the plants grow in mathematically straight lines, of
course when the crop is reaped, if you stand at one side of the field you
can see right across between the short stubbs, so that a mouse could
hardly find shelter. Then quickly come the noisy steam ploughing engines,
after them the couch collectors, and finally the heaps are burnt, and the
strong scent of smoke hangs over the ground. Against these interruptions
of their haunts and quiet ways what are the partridges to do? Even at
night the place is scarcely their own, for every now and then as the
breeze comes along, the smouldering fires are fanned into bright flame,
enough to alarm the boldest bird.

In another broad arable field, where the teams have been dragging the
plough, but have only just opened a few furrows and gone home, a flock of
sheep are feeding, or rather picking up a little, having been, turned in,
that nothing might be lost. There is a sense of quietness--of repose; the
trees of the copse close by are still, and the dying leaf as it drops
falls straight to the ground. A faint haze clings to the distant woods at
the foot of the hills; it is afternoon, the best part of an autumn day,
and sufficiently warm to make the stile a pleasant resting-place. A dark
cloud, whose edges rise curve upon curve, hangs in the sky, fringed with
bright white light, for the sun is behind it, and long, narrow streamers
of light radiate from the upper part like the pointed rays of an antique
crown. Across an interval of blue to the eastward a second massive cloud,
white and shining as if beaten out of solid silver, fronts the sun, and
reflects the beams passing horizontally through the upper ether downwards
on the earth like a mirror.

The sparrows in the stubble rise in a flock and settle down again. Yonder
a solitary lark is singing. Then the sun emerges, and the yellow autumn
beams flood the pale stubble and the dark red earth of the furrow. On the
bushes in the hedge hang the vines of the bryony,