138 Hillside. 



with their libations, because I did not give them sufficient 

 wherewith to drink to their fullest capacity. 



Having obtained the desired addition to his pocket, the 

 grimy young man returns to his companions, but as I move 

 off runs after me, and begs us not to go in that direction, 

 jerking his thumb towards a larch wood. I reply that that 

 is exactly where we intend going, when he mutters a hope 

 that I will not spoil sport. I remember what vast tracts of 

 splendid country are closed to the public because of the 

 stringency of the game laws, and so the required promise is, 

 not at all reluctantly, given and on we go. 



The flowers along the roadside now become brilliant with 

 the bright red coats of the Burnet moths, which are very 

 abundant here, and occasionally boom along in their heavy, 

 clumsy flight. A cloud obscures the sun for a moment ; the 

 bright scarlet-robed Tortoiseshell butterfly draws up its 

 wing, and a dead leaf hangs from the flower in its place ; the 

 Blue butterfly closes its wings, draws its legs together, and 

 allows itself to slide mechanically through the grass to the 

 ground, on which the pale colour of its underside renders it 

 invisible. Soon the sun comes out again, and the copse-side 

 once more teems with life. 



We now forsake the beaten footpath, which continues 

 across the field to the railway arch yonder, and pass along 

 under the edge of a birch wood, till we are arrested by a fine 

 yew tree just inside the wood, whose spreading branches 

 hang over into the field. As we casually glance up at this, 

 a strange-looking mass of what appears to be turf attracts 

 our attention ; but that casual glance has not satisfied us, 

 and so we look up again, and then discover that it is a piece 

 of lichen-covered wood which has lodged up there so 



