66 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND 



they seem to have as good a claim as many another 

 form of no older date, and which most of us 

 never saw. 



The fenceless path through the field, by which 

 the children, now in their sunny- weather pinnies, 

 go to the farm for milk, is overhung all the way. 

 Never was there a brighter arch. Each alternate 

 tree is a laburnum, some' of whose drooping 

 racemes come just far enough down for little hands 

 to reach. What a handful of flowers to get all 

 at once ! Broom stretches from trunk to trunk, 

 forming a second lower yellow line. 



No pathway in the country is pleasaiiter to me 

 than that. I have gone up a thousand times, 

 morning and evening, just at this season. - And 

 yet the farmer, who shares the charm in larger 

 measure than others as he drives up and down in 

 his gig, has of late been shaking his head. 



" Unwelcome intruders into his domain," he 

 calls what was there while he was yet in his 

 cradle ; and, shutting his eyes to escape the glow, 

 lest it might touch him, he breathes out threaten- 

 ings and slaughter. 



" They keep the sun from his grain." 



He always looks in the morning or afternoon, 

 when the shadow is half across to the next hedge. 



