a hardy
lot of young farmers from home, who took their instructions docilely
from the masterful factor. On my orders they had brought their
shotguns. We armed them with spades and woodmen's axes, and one man
wheeled some coils of rope in a handcart.

In the clear, windless air of morning the Grove, set amid its lawns,
looked too innocent and exquisite for ill. I had a pang of regret that
a thing so fair should suffer; nay, if I had come alone, I think I
might have repented. But the men were there, and the grim-faced Jobson
was waiting for orders. I placed the guns, and sent beaters to the far
side. I told them that every dove must be shot.

It was only a small flock, and we killed fifteen at the first drive.
The poor birds flew over the glen to another spinney, but we brought
them back over the guns and seven fell. Four more were got in the
trees, and the last I killed myself with a long shot. In half an hour
there was a pile of little green bodies on the sward.

Then we went to work to cut down the trees. The slim stems were an
easy task to a good woodman, and one after another they toppled to the
ground. And meantime, as I watched, I became conscious of a strange
emotion.

It was as if someone were pleading with me. A gentle voice, not
threatening, but pleading--something too fine for the sensual ear, but
touching inner chords of the spirit. So tenuous it was and distant
that I could think of no personality behind it. Rather it was the
viewless, bodiless grace of this delectable vale, some old exquisite
divinity of the groves. There was the heart of all sorrow in it, and
the soul of all loveliness. It seemed a woman's voice, some lost lady
who had brought nothing but goodness unrepaid to the world. And what
the voice told me was that I was destroying her last shelter.

That was the pathos of it--the voice was homeless. As the axes flashed
in the sunlight and the wood grew thin, that gentle spirit was pleading
with me for mercy and a brief respite. It seemed to be telling of a
world for centuries grown coarse and pitiless, of long sad wanderings,
of hardly-won shelter, and a peace which was the little all she sought
from men. There was nothing terrible in it. No thought of
wrong-doing. The spell, which to Semitic blood held the mystery of
evil, was to me, of the Northern race, only delicate and rare and
beautiful. Jobson and the rest did not feel it, I with my finer senses
caught nothing b