1 78 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



always took their food to a place of safety first. If he 

 is alarmed the water-rat instantly dives, and his idea of 

 security is a spot where he can drop like a stone under 

 the surface without a moment's reflection. Mr. Hay 

 could not understand why the water-rats were so timid 

 at this pond till he recollected that the preceding summer 

 two schoolboys used to get up in an oak that overhung 

 the water, each with a catapult, and, firing bullets from 

 these india-rubber weapons on the water-rats underneath, 

 slew nearly every one of them. The few left had evi- 

 dently learnt extreme caution from the misfortune of 

 their friends, and no longer trusted themselves away 

 from the water, into which they could slip at the move- 

 ment of a shadow. 



Mr. Hay disliked to sec the slouching fellows making 

 tracks across his fields, every one of which he looked on 

 with as much jealousy as if it had been a garden a 

 wild garden they were too, strewn sometimes with the 

 white cotton of the plane tree, hung about with roses and 

 sweet with mowing grass. Those who love fields and 

 every briar in the hedge dislike to see them entered 

 irreverently. I have just the same feeling myself even 

 of fields and woods in which I have no personal interest ; 

 it jars upon me to sec nature profaned. These fellows 

 were a ' Black George ' lot, in hamlet language. Nestor 

 Hay knew everybody in the village round about, their 

 fathers and grandfathers, their politics and religious 

 opinions, and whether they were new folk or ancient 

 inhabitants an encyclopaedic knowledge not written, an 

 Homeric memory. For I imagine in ancient days when 

 books were scarce that was how men handed down the 

 history of the chiefs of Troy. An Homeric memory for 

 everything superstitions, traditions, anecdotes ; the only 

 difficulty was that you could not command it. You 



