THE COUNTRY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 17 



stolen out, and in the still moist air before frost the violet 

 scent is expanding. Then, suddenly, the huntsman's horn 

 crackles upon the hill, splintering and tearing the solitude ; 

 a full, rich note follows, and goes to the heart of silence 

 and into our hearts, too. Again and again a shrewd, 

 victorious note that seems the very essence of the red 

 jackets that sprinkle the saddening slopes of Barbury Hill. 

 It is almost night — a most almighty quiet night, folding all 

 those hills as sheep into a pen ; yet the horn threatens it, 

 invades it, overthrows it, shooting to and fro in its sombre 

 texture threads of crimson and gold. And the heart leaps 

 up and is glad at this insult to the night, at the stinging 

 music, at the large scene, and the horses and horsemen 

 gigantic against the sky. To that horn blown at the edge 

 of night and the edge of the world come all the hunters of 

 the earth, as if out of the ground or the sea of time that 

 washes the base of the Down ; and they are more than 

 those dark hunters on the ridge, and stand among them, 

 weaving strangeness and solemnity about them. The 

 heart is a hunter still, and it has found a long-desired 

 quarry, and is bringing it home with melody over the early 

 world, as grim and illimitable as the level cloud-land in 

 the west. But the ploughman and his team go on ; the 

 horn has died away, and the hounds pass silently, like 

 dreams when night is over and day not begun. 



Not far from the foot of Barbury Hill, and almost on 

 the Ridgeway, is the parish of Draycot Foliatt, lying 

 pleasant among oats and ash-trees. It is merely a farm- 

 house or two, and their fields, their birds, their hares, and 

 moles, and stoats, and mice. Jefferies mentions it once 

 by name, in an early newspaper article without name, in 

 ' Wild Life in a Southern County ' as a parish where the 

 dismantled church has disappeared, and the churchyard 

 is an orchard, sacred from the plough. Some of Jefferies' 

 ancestors came from this isolated upland parish ; there 

 were many of his name at Draycot Foliatt in the eighteenth 

 century. Long ago, an old man at Marlborough Fair said 

 he knew a parish where there was * ne'er a wife, ne'er a 



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