240 IDLEHURST : 



the great apple-tree, while the old birds incessantly 

 feed them, a clamorous, fluttering brood ; the nut- 

 hatch hammering his wedged filbert with intense 

 application of science and strength ; the humble-bee 

 opening the trap-doors of the snapdragons, visible 

 at his work through the translucent tube. By silence 

 and keeping still one may come something closer to 

 the little lives. Most creeping things regard one at 

 all times merely as a fortuitous mountain range, to 

 be scuttled over ; but birds will come close to any one 

 who will preserve the bearing of a field scarecrow 

 for a reasonable time ; a week's persistence would 

 give results probably surprising to the learned 

 Societies. 



The landscape was everywhere tuned down to the 

 dull, heavy green of late Summer ; one oak showed 

 a rusty bronze ; here and there in the apple-trees a 

 bright yellow leaf foretold the fall. There were two 

 ashes in the middle distance, to which the eye re- 

 turned once and again with vague pleasure in their 

 mere green tuftiness pleasure reducible to no known 

 rules of the Beautiful, and without any touch of 

 association. From these trees the eye was drawn 

 off by a flash of yellow on the slope of one of the 

 Major's fields, a wild autumn garden of ragwort, 



