AN ENGLISH DEER-PARK. 293 



squire, legalising his foible by recognising it, fetched a 

 ladder and a hatchet, and chopped off the boughs with 

 his own hands. 



It was from the gun-room window that the squire 

 observed the change of the seasons and the flow of time. 

 The larger view he often had on horseback of miles of 

 country did not bring it home to him. The old familiar 

 trees, the sward, the birds, these told him of the advan- 

 cing or receding sun. As he reclined in the corner of 

 the broad window-seat, his feet up, and drowsy, of a 

 summer afternoon, he heard the languid cawing of an 

 occasional rook, for rooks are idle in the heated hours 

 of the day. He was aware, without conscious observa- 

 tion, of the swift, straight line drawn across the sky by 

 a wood-pigeon. The pigeons were continually to and 

 fro the cornfields outside the wall to the south and the 

 woods to the north, and their shortest route passed 

 directly over the limes. To the limes the bees went 

 when their pale yellow flowers appeared. Not many 

 butterflies floated over the short sward, which was fed 

 too close for flowers. The butterflies went to the old 

 garden, rising over the high wall as if they knew before- 

 hand of the flowers that were within. Under the sun 

 the short grass dried as it stood, and with the sap went 

 its green. There came a golden tint on that part of the 

 wheat-fields which could be seen over the road. A few 

 more days — how few they seemed ! — and there was a 

 spot of orange on the beech in a little copse near the 

 limes. The bucks were bellowing in the forest : as the 

 leaves turned colour their loves began and the battles 

 for the fair. Again a few days and the snow came, and 

 rendered visible the slope of the ground in the copse 

 between the trunks of the trees : the ground there was 

 at other times indistinct under brambles and withered 



