72 The Gamekeeper at Home, 



some digging tools recline — strong spades and grub- 

 axes for rooting out a lost ferret, left here temporarily 

 for convenience. The place, rough as it is, gives 

 shelter, and, throwing the door open, there is a vista 

 among the ash-poles and the hazel bushes over- 

 topped with great fir trees and more distant oaks. 

 In the later spring this is a lovely spot, the ground 

 all tinted with the shimmering colour of the blue- 

 bells, and the hazel musical with the voice of the 

 nightingale. 



Outside the wood, where the downland begins to 

 rise gradually there stretches a broad expanse of 

 furze growing luxuriantly on the thin barren soil, and 

 a mile or more in width. It has a beauty of its own 

 when in full yellow blossom — a yellow sea of flower, 

 scenting the air with an almost overpowering odour 

 as of a coarser pineapple, and full of the drowsy hum 

 of the bees busy in the interspersed thyme. It has 

 another beauty later on when the thick undergrowth 

 of heath is in bloom, and a pale purple carpet spreads 

 around. Here rabbits breed and sport, and hares 

 hide, and the curious furze-chats fly to and fro ; and 

 lastly, but not leastly, my lord Reynard the Fox loves 

 to take his ease, till he finally meets his fate in the 

 jaws of clamouring hounds, or is assassinated with the 

 aid of ' villanous saltpetre.' He is not easily shot, and 



