COUNTRY PLACES. 



175 



Church House to add another thousand tons to the 

 enormous weight of ecclesiastical bricks and mortar that 

 cumbers the land, would it not be more human to 

 signalise the time by the abolition of these cruel laws, 

 and by the introduction of some system to gradually 

 emancipate the poor from the workhouse, which is now 

 their master ? 



In the gathering dusk of the afternoon I saw a 

 mouse rush to a wall — a thick stone wall, — run up it a 

 few inches, and disappear in a chink under some grey 

 lichen. The poor little biter, as the gipsies call the 

 mouse, had a stronghold wherein to shelter himself, 

 and close by there was a corn-rick from which he drew 

 free supplies of food. A few minutes afterwards I was 

 interested in the movements of a pair of wrens that were 

 playing round the great trunk of an elm, flying from one 

 to another of the little twigs standing out from the 

 rough bark. First one said something in wren language, 

 and then the other answered ; they were husband and 

 wife, and after a long consultation they flew to the corn- 

 rick and crept into a warm hote under the thatch. So 

 both these, the least of animals and the least of birds, 

 have a resource, and man is the only creature that 

 punishes his fellow for daring to lie down and sleep. 



Up in the plain there were some mounds, or tumuli^ 

 about which nothing seemed to be known, though they 

 had evidently been cut into and explored. At last, 

 however, a farmer — Mr. Nestor Hay, who knew every- 

 thing — told me something about them. He cut them 

 open. He had an old county history and several other 

 volumes which had somehow accumulated in the Manor- 

 house Farm, and, like many country people, he was 

 extremely fond of studying the past. He fancied there 

 might have been a battle in that locality, and hence 



