66 DANVIS FARM LIFE 



nibble of the imforgotten herbage. Not many 

 days later the cows are turned out, and the lush 

 feed turns their pale butter to gold. 



Young lambs now claim the farmer's care. 

 Each day he must visit the flock to see if some 

 unnatural mother must not be forced to give suck 

 to her forlorn yeanling, or if some, half dead with 

 the cold of night or storm, need not be brought 

 to the kitchen fire to be warmed to hfe. When 

 a "lamb-killer" comes, as the cold storms are 

 called which sometimes occur in May, his arms are 

 likely enough to be filled with them before he has 

 made the round of the pasture. Often an or- 

 phaned or disowned lamb is brought up by hand, 

 and the "cosset" becomes the pet of the children 

 and the pest of the household. If Madame Rey- 

 nard takes a fancy to spring lamb for the provi- 

 sion of her household she makes sad havoc. Her 

 depredations must be stopped some way, either by 

 removing the flock to a safer pasture, or, if her 

 burrow can be found, by digging out and destroy- 

 ing her young, leaving her with no family to pro- 

 vide for or by ending with her own life her free- 

 booting career. To compass her taking-off, the 

 farmer repairs with his gun, in the gray of the 

 morning, to the woodside, from which he enters the 

 field and, hiding behind a stump to leeward of her 

 customary line of approach, awaits her coming. 

 As, on evil deeds intent, she steals cautiously 



