6 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. 



been educated for it, and was only awaiting the 

 promised opening. He was young, but no yokel ; too 

 knowing of town cunning and selfish hardness to 

 entangle himself. Yet those soft brown eyes, that 

 laughing shape ; Andrew was very young and so was 

 she, and the summer sun burned warm. 



The blackbirds whistled the day away, and the 

 swallows sought their nests under the eaves. The 

 curved moon hung on the sky as the hunter's horn on 

 the wall. Timid Wat — the hare — came ambling along 

 the lane, and almost ran against two lovers in a recess 

 of the bushes by an elm. Andrew, Andrew ! these 

 lips are too sweet for you ; get you to your desk — that 

 smiling shape, those shaded, soft brown eyes, let them 

 alone. Be generous — do not awaken hopes you can 

 never, never fulfil. The new-mown hay is scented 

 yet more sweetly in the evening — of a summer's eve 

 it is always too soon to go home. 



The blackbirds whistled again, big Mat slew the 

 grass from the rising to the going down of the sun — 

 moon-daisies, sorrel, and buttercups lay in rows of 

 swathe as he mowed. I wonder whether the man 

 ever thought, as he reposed at noontide on a couch of 

 grass under the hedge ? Did he think that those 

 immense muscles, that broad, rough-hewn plank of a 

 chest of his, those vast bones encased in sinewy limbs 

 —being flesh in its fulness — ought to have more of 

 this earth than mere common men, and still more than 

 thin-faced people — mere people, not men — in black 

 coats ? Did he dimly claim the rights of strength in 

 his mind, and arrogate to himself the prerogatives of 

 arbitrary kings ? Who knows what big processes of 





