HARVEST AND GLEANING TIME 183 



still you persevere. At last your hands are 

 near the grass ball ; very gingerly your fingers 

 touch the sides, so as to close round it. Is he 

 at home ? you think, after all this trouble. 



He is, for he slips through, not out of, his 

 grass house, glides over the twigs, sits up for 

 a moment to look at you with his full dark 

 eyes, as much as to say, " Serve you right for 

 meddling ! " and then he springs down into the 

 thick tangle at the bottom. 



I have made captures at times when I kept 

 pets, but my misses have been far in excess 

 of my captures. Torn hands, torn clothes, and 

 a general all-over feeling of being outwitted by 

 a mouse, are slightly humiliating. Sleepmouse 

 he may be called, and rightly so, for the dor- 

 mouse does sleep both soundly and long ; but 

 in his time that is, his appointed seasons 

 a brighter or more wide-awake creature than 

 the little dormouse it would be hard to find. 



A southerly wind and rain with it, sheets of 

 rain that turn when the wind lulls into a steady 

 downpour. The brooks are bank-high and the 

 rivers in flood ; as to the fields, the furrows are 

 edge-high with water that is not able to get 

 away. A dreary outlook this, and far more 

 dreary to be out in, as I am, not from choice, 



