FROM THE HEART OF THE WOLDS. 2O1 



wife, being Royalists, were attacked by the Parliamentarians in 

 1643, dragged out of their house, barbarously illtreated in 

 Lincoln Castle, and their servant murdered.* The flower- 

 garden is formal, fragrant with memories rather than blossom. 

 Here the Northmen's traces are again very apparent ; together 

 with Thoresway and Thoresby, in the immediate neighbour- 

 hood, the parish bears the name of their great deity, Thor. 

 Still the beck flows on, to a point where the Thoresway branch 

 augments it after itself has passed through Croxby Pond, a 

 large reedy swamp-like sheet of water, tenanted by coots and 

 widgeon. Here it finds itself cutting athwart a series of chalk 

 valleys, the even rounded tops running along as regularly as if 

 carved by man's spade, while the chalk protrudes and only 

 leaves scant room for fringes of bents and hawkweeds to cover 

 its nakedness. Lower down these scarped cliffs rise into an 

 amphitheatre clothed with larch and spruce. At its base the 

 beck runs with some rapidity, the badgers have found a con- 

 genial haunt in the retired nooks above. The larger willow- 

 herb grows along the waterside in tall thickets which provide, 

 in late summer, the exact tint of red necessary to blend har- ' 

 moniously with the pale scheme of colour around, but are 

 intensely distasteful to the keen trout-fisher, as he cannot 

 throw his flies by them with any comfort. Here these willow- 

 herbs abound, but not to any great extent elsewhere on the 

 beck. They form a sample of the little differences which a 

 loving eye can discern at every field of its course. Mr. 

 Jefferies saves us from attempting to describe willow-herbs by 

 his keen appreciation of their beauty. "They are the strongest 

 and most prominent of all the brook plants. At the end of 

 March or beginning of April the stalks appear a few inches 

 high, and they gradually increase in size until in July they 

 meet above the waist and form a thicket by the shore. Not 

 till July does the flower open, so that, though they make so 

 * Sir C. Anderson, ut sup.) p. 87. 



