420 A FARMER'S YEAR 



if its arguments are slightly illogical, a letter like this, coming from 

 such a source, is a curious sign of the times. 



December 10. Standing on the new pastures at Bedingham this 

 afternoon just before the fall of night, the scene looked very desolate, 

 wet as it was with rain and torn with wind. Above the flat, bare 

 fields hung a singularly lurid heaven, which the background of 

 black woodlands almost seemed to touch, while low down, sinking 

 to the horizon between two lids of angry cloud, a red sun stared 

 like some fearful, watching eye. To the left, and strangely white in 

 hue against this veil of gloom and fire, appeared the naked arms 

 of a tall windmill. Then suddenly the cloud-lids close ; the fierce 

 eye sleeps, the pale mill vanishes, the drear landscape turns dull, and 

 in the distance disappears ; while among the leafless oaks the wind 

 moans the requiem of another winter's day. 



On my homeward path I met Moore travelling from Ditching- 

 ham with three horses and a waggon, whereon was piled a tower- 

 ing load of thorn bushes to be used in the draining of the Denton 

 field, No. 22. The horses stepping along merrily as they neared 

 the stable, the rugged face of their driver, the swaying burden of 

 the rope-held thorns, the faded colours of the waggon, made 

 together a homely but a striking picture as they advanced down 

 the deserted road in the gloom of a short twilight. Why I scarcely 

 know, but in my eyes Bedingham is a spot endowed with a pecu- 

 liar charm, perhaps because it is so very rural and so unvisited. 

 Here at least, among its wet and dreary fields more than in any 

 other place in England with which I am acquainted, do I seem to 

 discover Nature's actual face and presence. 



The want of bushes is becoming a serious question on the Moat 

 Farm. Of late years we have drained with such vigour that scarcely 

 a fence is left to cut, so that now most of the necessary stuff must 

 be brought from Ditchingham. By the way, a gentleman review- 

 ing an early instalment of this book in an agricultural paper, 

 pointed the finger of enlightened scorn at a passage in which I talk 

 of pipe-draining as a waste of money on such land as that with' 



