22 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. 



titled to the cottager, was so full of real and true 

 humanity, so ready, to start forward to help, so im- 

 bued with the highest sentiments. The wrong is done 

 in official circles. No steeLclad baron of Norman 

 days, no ruthless red-stockinged cardinal, with the 

 Bastile in one hand and the tumbril in the other, ever 

 ruled with so total an absence of Heart as the modern 

 " official," the Tyrants of the nineteenth century ; 

 whose rods are hobbies in the name of science mis- 

 called, in the name of temperance perverted, in the 

 name of progress backwards, in the name of education 

 without food. It is time that the common sense of 

 society at large rose in revolution against it. Mean- 

 time dynamite. 



This is a long digression : suppose while you have 

 been reading it that Mr. Roberts has passed one of 

 the two terrible nights, his faithful Bill at one end of 

 the rickyard and himself at the other. The second 

 night they took up their positions in the same manner 

 as soon as it was dark. There was no moon, and the 

 sky was overcast with those stationary clouds which 

 often precede a great storm, so that the darkness was 

 marked, and after they had parted a step or two they 

 lost sight of each other. Worn with long wakefulness, 

 and hard labour during the day, they both dropped 

 asleep at their posts. Mr. Roberts awoke from the 

 dead vacancy of sleep to the sensation of a flash of 

 light crossing his eyelids, and to catch a glimpse of a 

 man's neck with a red necktie illuminated by flame 

 like a Rembrandt head in the centre of shadow. He 

 leaped forward literally yelling — the incendiary he 

 wholly forgot — his rick ! his rick ! He beat the side 



