40 THE FACE OF THE FIELDS 



" Then came the mid-June Sunday morning, 

 with dawn breaking a little after three : a warm, 

 wide-awake dawn, with the level mist lifted from 

 the level surface of the pond a full hour higher 

 than I had seen it any morning before. 



"This was the day. I knew it. I have heard 

 persons say that they can hear the grass grow; 

 that they know by some extra sense when danger 

 is nigh. That we have these extra senses I fully 

 believe, and I believe they can be sharpened by 

 cultivation. For a month I had been brooding 

 over this pond, and now I knew. I felt a stirring 

 of the pulse of things that the cold-hearted 

 turtles could no more escape than could the 

 clods and I. 



" Leaving my horse unhitched, as if he, too, 

 understood, I slipped eagerly into my covert for 

 a look at the pond. As I did so, a large pickerel 

 ploughed a furrow out through the spatter-docks, 

 and in his wake rose the head of an enormous 

 turtle. Swinging slowly around, the creature 

 headed straight for the shore, and without a pause 

 scrambled out on the sand. 



" She was about the size of a big scoop-shovel ; 

 but that was not what excited me, so much as her 



