6 Idylls of the Field. 



—a strange-looking bird in his suit of black and grey, 

 like a dress of motley. He is a winter visitor to Eng- 

 land for the most part, though found in summer in the 

 sister kingdoms. 



Yonder comes a long line of peewits, with that 

 strange rhythmic beat of wing that distinguishes them 

 afar off from rooks even when their speech or colouring 

 does not betray them. 



Here and there among them flies a curlew, and, 

 close behind, a troop of golden plovers, uttering at 

 times their musical call. How mournful, in the hush 

 of night, sounds on lonely moors that plaintive cry ! 

 A note of terror, too, for to the Northumbrian peasant 

 the birds are no other than the wandering spirits of 

 Jews whose impious hands were laid upon our Lord. 



And now, too, the great fortress wakens into life. 

 Its cold stonework glows under the soft fingers of the 

 young Aurora. On tower and turret streams the 

 mellow light ; it reddens the round arch of the postern, 

 up whose time-worn steps the bold defenders in its last 

 blockade retired before the onset of the Rose of York ; 

 it blazes on the gilded figures of the dial, glitters on 

 the eastern windows, flashes among the claymores on 

 the armoury wall. Even the ancient gun that tradition 

 Drought from a Spanish galleon, that in the flight of 

 the Armada went to wrack out there among the islands, 

 glimmers under its rusty coat as the sunshine glances 

 on its battered metal. 



But now the clock, like a wakeful sentinel, proclaims 



