WOODLANDS n 



and deserted, save by a stray rabbit among the thistles, 

 and the grasshoppers ceaselessly leaping in the grass. 



Returning presently to the gateway just outside the 

 wood, where upon first coming the pheasants and 

 partridges were dusting themselves, a waggon is now 

 passing among the corn and is being laden with the 

 sheaves. But afar off, across the broad field and 

 under the wood, it seems somehow only a part of the 

 silence and the solitude. The men with it move 

 about the stubble, calmly toiling; the horses, having 

 drawn it a little way, become motionless, reposing as 

 they stand, every line of their large limbs expressing 

 delight in physical ease and idleness. 



Perhaps the heat has made the men silent, for scarcely 

 a word is spoken j if it were, "in the stillness it must 

 be heard, though they are at some distance. The 

 wheels, well greased for the heavy harvest work, do 

 not creak. Save an occasional monosyllable, as the 

 horses are ordered on, or to stop, and a faint rustling 

 of straw, there is no sound. It may be the flood of 

 brilliant light, or the mirage of the heat, but in some way 

 the waggon and its rising load, the men and the horses, 

 have an unreality of appearance. 



The yellow wheat and stubble, the dull yellow of the 

 waggon, toned down by years of weather, the green 

 woods near at hand, darkening in the distance and 

 slowly changing to blue, the cloudless sky, the heat- 

 suffused atmosphere, in which things seem to float 

 rather than to grow or stand, the shadowless field, all 

 are there, and yet are not there, but far away and 

 vision-like. The waggon, at last laden, travels away, 

 and seems rather to disappear of itself than to be 

 hidden by the trees. It is an effort to awake and 

 move from the spot. 



