THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FARM. 281 



cruel nip it has caught the clover stems just at the back 

 of the neck, giving them a rheumatic twinge where the 

 roller had managed to bruise it. I say nothing of that, 

 for a good stirring with the horse-hoe, which is working 

 capitally, will cause the one crop to tiller, besides, that 

 under the surface, I find many weak seedlings just ready 

 to start if more genial nights would encourage them. 

 The wheat I don't think is after all as bad as it looks, 

 although several of my neighbours are, I understand, 

 breaking it up and replanting with barley. The clovers 

 too were well dressed with a coating of long manure, so 

 that I think they may come round, for there is nothing 

 like long drawers and good keep for a cold. The intel- 

 ligence is unhappily of a more vexatious description. A 

 valuable young porcine matron, vexed I fear by the 

 severity of her throes, has turned cannibal and devoured 

 her offspring ; while, on the other hand, master Keynard 

 has found our juicy stores out again and has appropriated 

 several of our darling wild-ducks. This is the more 

 annoying as we cannot leave them out at night now, and 

 the usual region of their nests is unsafe. Unluckily 

 they require to choose their own, and will not sit just 

 where the fowl-wife wishes, so we have the carpenter 

 building rafts to float on a pool enclosed within the fold- 

 yard, hoping that the red robber will not venture there. 

 He is, however, sufficiently bold, as Ciceronian authors 

 write. In fact he waylaid his first victim quite close to 

 the kennel of a terrier that, remembering former expe- 

 rience, I thought well to chain up in the orchard beside 

 the faggot-heap, under which the ducks build. It was 

 a curious upstanding, head-on -one -side, swaggering, 

 tailor-like, comical, little mallard, white as snow too 

 (being a cross with the call-duck), that he took first. 



