THE FAERY YEAR 



of jays at the pairing season, as the slashing matches 

 of the German students differ from the affairs of 

 honour between hard-bitten eighteenth-century 

 gentlemen. But I am sure these duels are rare. As 

 a rule, neither party comes out of the fight a whit 

 the worse. 



The Storm Pines 



In wild weather I walked up to the three clumps 

 of pines, and found the place in the very mood to 

 help me to imagine their lost ravens. The way is 

 through the wood, then up the long, rising lane, 

 past common and ancient heath, whose rough black- 

 thorns at the top are thinly sprinkled here and there 

 with white travellers' joy that looks like snow. It is 

 a lonely way one thatched, dark old farmhouse 

 standing back from the lane, and the cottage, whose 

 tenant says he can remember the ravens, which 

 he last saw when he "minded" the cows on the 

 common. 



They would fly over the cottage sometimes, and 

 he cannot forget their cry it was more like the 

 yapping of a dog than the note of any bird. 



Past some ferny banks and the grass-grown 

 brick-kiln, and then the clumped pines, dark and 

 stern, begin to show themselves. They lie near the 

 highest point of the ridge, and from here one looks 

 across the valley to a hill still less tamed, a thousand 

 296 



