A BARN 71 



jammed, and yet more are borne up by the nettles 

 beneath it. 



Mosses have grown over the old red brick wall, both 

 on the top and following the lines of the mortar, and 

 bunches of wall grasses flourish along the top. The wheat, 

 and barley, and hay carted home to the rickyard contain 

 the seeds of innumerable plants, many of which, dropping 

 to the ground, come up next year. The trodden earth 

 round where the ricks stood seems favourable to their 

 early appearance ; the first poppy blooms here, though 

 its colour is paler than those which come afterwards 

 in the fields. 



In spring most of the ricks are gone, threshed and 

 sold, but there remains the vast pile of straw always 

 straw and the three-cornered stump of a hay-rick which 

 displays bands of different hues, one above the other, 

 like the strata of a geological map. Some of the hay 

 was put up damp, some in good condition, and some had 

 been browned by bad weather before being carted. 



About the straw-rick, and over the chaff that every- 

 where strews the earth, numerous fowls search, and by the 

 gateway Chanticleer proudly stands, tall and upright, the 

 king of the rickyard still, as he and his ancestors have 

 been these hundreds of years. Under the granary, which 

 is built on stone staddles, to exclude the mice, some 

 turkeys are huddled together calling occasionally for a 

 " halter, 7 ' and beyond them the green, glossy neck of a 

 drake glistens in the sunshine. 



When the corn is high, and sometimes before it is well 

 up, the doors of the barn are daily open, and shock- 

 headed children peer over the hatch. There are others 

 within playing and tumbling on a heap of straw always 

 straw which is their bed at night. The sacks which 

 form their counterpane are rolled aside, and they have 



