the rooks are at the acorns, and the plough is at
work in the stubble. I have never seen him since. I never failed to
glance over the parapet into the shadowy water. Somehow it seemed to
look colder, darker, less pleasant than it used to do. The spot was
empty, and the shrill winds whistled through the poplars.

A BARN

A broad red roof of tile is a conspicuous object on the same road which
winds and turns in true crooked country fashion, with hedgerows, trees,
and fields on both sides, and scarcely a dwelling visible. It is not,
indeed, so crooked as a lane in Gloucestershire, which I verily believe
passes the same tree thrice, but the curves are frequent enough to vary
the view pleasantly.

Approaching from either direction, on turning a certain corner a great
red roof rises high above the hedges, and the line of its ridge is seen
every way through the trees. With this old barn, as with so much of the
architecture of former times, the roof is the most important part. The
gables, for instance, of Elizabethan houses occupy the eye far more than
the walls; and so, too, with the antique halls that still exist. The
roof of this old barn is itself the building; the roof and the doors,
for the sweeping slope of the tiles comes down within reach of the hand,
while the great doors extend half-way to the ridge.

By the low black wooden walls a little chaff has been spilt, and has
blown out and mingles with the dust of the road. Loose straws lie across
the footpath, trodden flat by passing feet; straws have wandered across
the road and lodged on the mound, and others have roamed still farther
round the corner. Between the gatepost and the wall that encloses the
rickyard more straws are jammed, and yet more are borne up by the
nettles beneath it.

Mosses have grown over the old red brick wall, both on the top and
following the lines of the mortar, and bunches of wall grasses flourish
along the top. The wheat, and barley, and hay carted home to the
rickyard contain the seeds of innumerable plants, many of which,
dropping to the ground, come up next year. The trodden earth round where
the ricks stood seems favourable to their early appearance; the first
poppy blooms here, though its colour is paler than those which come
afterwards in the fields.

In spring most of the ricks are gone, threshed and sold, but there
remains the vast pile of straw--always straw--and the three-cornered
stump of a hay-rick which displays b