HIS NEIGHBOURS 43 



highway, and the tree a convenient stretching- 

 post, so that next to the crowing of the cocks, 

 the scratching noise made by powerful claws 

 was the most familiar noise of the grey dawn. 

 Luckily the leveret had no fear of the badgers, 

 no more fear of them indeed than of the long- 

 tailed tit whom he watched coming and going 

 with food for a brood of insatiable nestlings in 

 the near furze-bush. The cries of the young tits, 

 all eager for the food she brought, were at times 

 the only sound that broke the silence of the 

 sequestered spot ; there were days when scarcely 

 a breath stirred, when the stalks of the barley 

 were as motionless as the stem of the tree, and 

 the shadow of the frond looked like a stain on 

 the leveret's coat. 



He enjoyed the slumbrous peace, and revelled 

 in the noonday heat that shimmered above the 

 array of barley ears and veiled with a pearly haze 

 valley and hills and all the land between. It was 

 a delightful time, which in his innocence he thought 

 would last for ever. He knew nothing of the 

 ways of husbandry, of the harvesting of crops by 

 the dwellers of the homestead, whence by day 

 came shout and song, and where the strange light 

 glowed in the early hours of foraging time. He 

 did not know that man was lord of the earth ; as 

 little did he realise that he himself was man's 



