132 MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



recollect those days of midwinter terror, when the 

 partridge "drives" took place over those bare up- 

 lands, and when the remorseless advance of the 

 beaters drove all wild life with wings whirling from 

 its last scant cover among the turnips over the line of 

 hedges where the ranged sportsmen were hidden, 

 and where an inferno of explosions greeted each 

 scattering covey. Some of the hares might recollect 

 this, too ; for, unlike rat or rabbit, mouse, hedgehog, 

 or weasel, the hare has no hole of refuge, but must 

 run, as the partridges fly, straight into the terror of 

 death. 



THE SHELTER OF THE CROPS. 

 But those who could recall these terrible times 

 were few. The vast majority of the tenants of the 

 quiet corn-glades were young creatures of the year, 

 who had grown with the growing corn and knew no 

 other kind of world than this shady store-house of 

 food, where sounds of the outer universe seldom 

 reached them, save in the muffled echo of a trotting 

 horse's feet, or the toot-toot of a motor-car upon the 

 distant high-road, or the faint chorus of bleating 

 sheep folded upon the hay-crop beyond. But from 

 green the cloistered aisles of cornstalks had yellowed 

 to the harvest, and one day the creaking gates were 

 thrown open, and men thrust their way between the 

 hedges and the crop, where for many weeks only the 

 solitary gamekeeper's foot had passed, and presently 

 the strange swish-swish of scythes sent the wondering 

 small folk of the field stealthily creeping by devious 

 routes among the corn away from the ill-omened 

 sound. 



