-IRE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. 



SITS OF OAK BARK. 



I. THE ACORN-GATHERER. 



BLACK rooks, yellow oak leaves, and a boy asleep 

 at the foot of the tree. His head was lying on a 

 bulging root close to the stem : his feet reached to a 

 small sack or bag half full of acorns. In his slumber 

 his forehead frowned they were fixed lines, like tho 

 grooves in the oak bark. There was nothing else in 

 his features attractive or repellent : they were such as 

 might have belonged to a dozen hedge children. The 

 set angry frown was the only distinguishing mark 

 like the dents on a penny made by a hobnail boot, by 

 which it can be known from twenty otherwise pre- 

 cisely similar. His clothes were little better than 

 sacking, but clean, tidy, and repaired. Any one would 

 have said, " Poor, but carefully tended." A kind heart 

 might have put a threepenny-bit in his clenched little 

 fist, and sighed. But that iron set frown on the young 

 brow would not have unbent even for the silver. Caw ! 

 Cawl 



The happiest creatures in the world are the rooks 

 at the acorns. It is not only the eating of them but 

 the finding: the fluttering up there and hopping from 



