Sabrina Fair. 79 



little tongues join in the chorus, and excited little 

 figures leap from Chough to bough in hot pursuit of 

 some unseen enemy. 



There he goes ! a stoat cantering along under the 

 bank. Entirely oblivious of the hue and cry over- 

 head, he pauses here to look into a rabbit-hole, there 

 to peer into a hollow tree. Now, quickening his pace, 

 he disappears, while the angry birds follow him still 

 with cries of warning and indignation. 



Yonder is a man fishing from a coracle. It is a 

 strange coincidence that he has moored it just where 

 Watling Street passes the river by a long disused ford. 

 Under the picturesque little village, that clusters round 

 the square tower on the rising ground, lies buried an 

 old Roman town. Broad fields of barley ripen round 

 the ruins of the little forum. Fragments of sculptured 

 stone are built into the cottage walls. The very gates 

 of the churchyard are hung from pillars that adorned 

 a heathen temple. 



For ever silent are the streets of that little colony. 

 Unknown to that dark-bearded fisherman the dress, 

 the speech, the manners of its lost inhabitants. But 

 the boat he uses is the boat they used. Its build, its 

 paddle, the manner of carrying it, have outlasted the 

 changes of twenty centuries. 



By this time the sun is high in the heavens. It 

 deepens the warm red of the cliffs by the river, and 

 whitens the canvas of the little tent some rovers have 

 pitched by the shore. 



