254 THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FAEM. 



to sustain this plant in full vigour, although in fallen 

 majesty. After all, if it is not allowed to ripen, the 

 sheep like it amazingly. 



How hard it is ! I spent to-day the best hours of 

 noon in a saunter, hoping to obtain a few birds for the 

 enjoyment of a kind old lady ; but, although they have 

 been undisturbed for weeks, I saw^ no signs of a feather. 

 Yet, hard lines that it is, just as I take my wonted walk 

 before nightfall, up start in succession some fifteen 

 cock -pheasants at my very feet ; then a hundred feet 

 beyond, upon the meadow, such a nice covey of plump 

 partridges, and from beside my jetty a wild-duck. Hard 

 lines, I emphatically repeat. Where could they have 

 been all the day ? " Hiding, dear, I suppose, from this 

 dreadful cold," is all the comfort and explanation I get 

 from my feminine adviser. Tidings have just reached 

 me of a rascal being deservedly caught. A gentleman, 

 in South Wales, had bought and farmed improvingly a 

 rough estate, adjoining which a fellow farmed some 

 hundred hired acres of mountain land, and who was of 

 that cantankerous nature that he could never agree with 

 his neighbours, but took every opportunity of increas- 

 ing his own keep by encouraging his sheep and cattle 

 to stray on to their ground, especially where there 

 might happen to be good pasture. This game had gone 

 on, to the annoyance of everyone, for some months, 

 despite repeated notice, which was only answered by 

 insolence, when, at last, his things were sent to the 

 pound. The charges were paid ; but as these unprin- 

 cipled fellows will always manage, there came another 

 side of the picture. One morning, while shaving, this 

 gentleman got the disagreeable intelligence that twelve 

 of his heifers had been caught upon the farmer's land, 



