HAUNTS OF THE LAPWING. 223 



the open. Minutely searching every clod they gather 

 their food in imperceptible items from the surface. 



Sodden leaves lie in the furrows along the side 

 of the copse; broken and decaying burdocks still 

 uphold their jagged stems, but will be soaked away 

 by degrees ; dank grasses droop outwards ; the red 

 seed of a dock is all that remains of the berries and 

 fruit, the seeds and grain of autumn. Like the 

 hedge, the copse is vacant. Nothing moves within, 

 watch as carefully as I may. The boughs are 

 blackened by wet and would touch cold. From the 

 grasses to the branches there is nothing any one 

 would like to handle, and I stand apart even from 

 the bush that keeps away the rain. The green 

 plovers are the only things of life that save the earth 

 from utter loneliness. Heavily as the rain may fall, 

 cold as the saturated wind may blow, the plovers 

 remind us of the beauty of shape, colour, and 

 animation. They seem too slender to withstand 

 the blast they should have gone with the swallows 

 too delicate for these rude hours; yet they alone 

 face them. ^ 



Once more the wave of rain has passed, and yonder 

 the hills appear ; these are but uplands. The nearest 

 and highest has a green rampart, visible for a 

 moment against the dark sky, and then again 

 wrapped in a toga of misty cloud. So the chilled 

 Roman drew his toga around him in ancient days as 

 from that spot he looked wistfully southwards and 

 thought of Italy. Wee-ah-wee ! Some chance move- 

 ment has been noticed by the nearest bird, and away 

 they go at once as if with the same wings, sweeping 



