OCTOBER JHaA^ 3P 



Were wrapped in skins and lived in a hole on the hillside yonder, 

 not in a brick box. Yes, and I know the end of them all, for I drive 

 upon their graves and wash their bones. Let them be ! Winter is 

 before them — beautiful, white, silent winter.' 



Well, better perhaps the snow's peace and the bonds of the 

 death-frost than this autumn rage of confusion and decay. 



With what terror must our savage forefathers have looked 

 forward to the coming of winter, with its dreadful darkness, its cold, 

 its loneliness, its prowling enemies and ravening beasts ? What 

 must it have been even in the Middle Ages, and right down to the 

 last century, when fireplaces in the houses were ver)' few, and scant 

 tallow dips furnished the only illumination ; when the roads were 

 such that it took four strong farm-horses to drag a coach along 

 them ; when there was no fresh meat for food, and cut-throat foot- 

 pads lurked in the neighbouring thicket ? To this day our highly 

 civilised race has not got over its dread of winter and the gloom 

 with which it is associated. Even among grown men there are 

 few whom the horror of the dark does not take hold of from time 

 to time, or even of the night when it is not dark. Not long ago 

 I asked a friend, whose name would be known to every reader of 

 this book, and whom one would certainly not associate with such 

 fears, whether he ever felt afraid of being alone at night. He 

 confessed to me that he did — that occasionally, when he sat 

 working late, a panic would seize him, causing him to turn out the 

 lights and slip away straight to bed. I believe that his experience 

 is not by any means exceptional. We come of a Northern stock, 

 and as all students of the Sagas, that magnificent but neglected 

 literature, will know, to our Norse ancestors some few generations 

 since the dark of the long winter w^as a fearful thing, peopled 

 with malevolent, able-bodied trolls and with ghosts of the 

 dead. 



Last night Hood was knocked down by a heifer, although he 

 escaped with nothing worse than an injured foot. The heifer was 

 in ditificulties with her first calf and actually fainted away. When 

 she came to herself, either she had forgotten about the calf, or— 



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