42 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



a perfect back-garden for the boy, as they were preserved 

 against nearly everybody else. They included dense, 

 silent wood, more open undergrowth, deep hedges, moist 

 sedge, and were rich in many kinds of birds except birds of 

 prey, although these visited the place persistently. Among 

 the withies of the little Reservoir there were snipe to be 

 had ; and in the winter great crested grebes and divers 

 came with many other water-birds to the main Reservoir. 



Other instructors the boy had in a greyhound and in 

 Juno, the pointer, who used to take fish out of the farm- 

 yard trough without hurting them. Job Brown and 

 others set him thinking about snares for fish, feather, and 

 fur. 



If he was becoming a keen and hardened shooter, 

 sharing the sportsman's tenuous emotion of loving the 

 hare that he has killed, he was a good deal more also. 

 Watching in hedges, or up in trees, or in the punt, he 

 trained his fine, restless eyes to their craft : 



' [Sitting in a tree] like so many slender webs, his lines 

 of sight thus drawn through mere chinks of foliage radi- 

 ated from a central spot, and at the end of each he seemed 

 as if he could feel if anything moved as much as he could 

 see it. Each of these webs strained at his weary mind, 

 and even in the shade the strong glare of the summer 

 noon pressed heavily on his eyelids.' 



In fact, he fell asleep. He learned to know the roads 

 by which the birds travelled, so that he said (in ' Wild 

 Life in a Southern County ') he thought he could draw 

 a map of the fields, and show the routes and resorts of 

 birds and beasts ; and it was probably he that discovered 

 the ice-blink on Coate Reservoir — the invisible mist above 

 the ice which yet concealed a lantern laid upon it, unless 

 the watcher lifted his head well above the surface. Several 

 of his contemporaries recall his skill and energy in skating. 

 He and his younger, but robuster and more daring brother, 

 Harry, had a reputation for their skating which points to 

 a youth well spent upon Reservoir and Canal. 



Life at home was often of a delicious quiet, and before 



