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ually turned from side to side, starting at everything, sometimes bare places on the shoulders, all tell the same tale of blows and brutal treatment. Suburban streets which a minute before were crowded with ladies and children (most gentlemen are in town at midday) are suddenly vacated when the word passes that cattle are coming. People rush everywhere, into gardens, shops, back lanes, anywhere, as if the ringing scabbards of charging cavalry were heard, or the peculiar thumping rattle of rifles as they come to the "present" before a storm of bullets. It is no wonder that townsfolk exhibit a fear of cattle which makes their friends laugh when they visit the country after such experiences as these. This should be put down with a firm hand. By the roadside here the hay tyers, who cut up the hayricks into trusses, use balances--a trifling matter, but sufficient to mark a difference, for in the west such men use a steelyard slung on a prong, the handle of the prong on the shoulder and the points stuck in the rick, with which to weigh the trusses. Wooden cottages, wooden barns, wooden mills are also characteristic. Mouchers come along the road at all times and seasons, gathering sacksful of dandelions in spring, digging up fern roots and cowslip mars for sale, cutting briars for standard roses, gathering water-cresses and mushrooms, and in the winter cutting rushes. There is a rook with white feathers in the wing which belongs to an adjacent rookery, and I have observed a blackbird also streaked with white. One January day, when the snow was on the ground and the frost was sharp, when the pale sun seemed to shine brightest round the rim of the disk, as if there were a band of stronger light there, I saw a white animal under a heap of poles by the wayside, near the great hedge I have mentioned. It immediately concealed itself, but, thinking that it was a ferret gone astray, I waited, and presently the head and neck were cautiously protruded. I made the usual call with the lips, but the creature instantly returned to cover. I waited again, hiding this time, and after an interval the creature moved and hastened away from the poles, where it was, in a measure, exposed, to the more secure shelter of some bushes. Then I saw that it was of a clear white, while so-called white ferrets are usually a dingy yellow, and the white tail was tipped with black. From these circumstances, and from the timidity and anxious desire to
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