26o THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



white cool roads. The wood-pigeon's is the sole voice in 

 the oak woods of the low hills, except that once or twice 

 a swift screams as he pursues that martial flight of his — 

 as of one who swings a sword as he goes — towards the 

 beeches and hop gardens of the higher hills in the north; 

 it is perhaps the last day for more than eight months that 

 his cry will be heard. A few barley-straws hang from 

 the hazels; some leaves are yellow. Autumn, in fact, 

 seems possible to the mind that is not perfectly content 

 with these calm sweet airs and the sense of the fulness 

 of things. 



At a crossing a small island is made amidst this and 

 three other roads, and on the island stands an oast house 

 with two mellow cones and white leaning cowls; and 

 beside it a simple tiled cart-lodge, dimly displaying massive 

 wheels, curving bulwarks of waggons and straight shafts 

 behind its doorless pillars of rough-hewn wood. Making 

 one group with these, though separated from them by one 

 road, is an old red farmhouse, of barely distinguishable 

 timber and brick, with white-edged dormers and lower 

 windows and doors, entrenched behind hollyhocks of deep- 

 est red and the burning discs of everlasting sunflowers. 

 Behind the gates stand four haystacks brightly thatched, 

 and one that is dark and old and carved into huge stairs. 



Notice the gate into the rickyard. It is of the usual 

 five oak bars; and across these is a diagonal bar from the 

 lowest end nearest the hinge to the upper end of the 

 opposite side, and from top to bottom a perpendicular 

 cross-bar divides the gate. The top bar marks it as no 

 common gate made at a factory with a hundred others of 

 the same kind, though there are scores of them in Kent. 

 It thickens gradually towards the hinge end of the gate, 



