2 5 o OCTOBER 



such as the Knight saw in Childe Poland to the Dark Tower 

 Came. Its ribs were like ridges and furrows ; its heels 

 naked of hair ; it &quot; stood over &quot; as its age made likely. 

 &quot; You d better make it trot, or there ll be an inquiry/ 

 someone called out ; and the old creature, trying its best 

 to the last, responded nobly. It was still capable of a 

 job of work, and was knocked down to an admiring 

 bidder for 303. 



We migrated from the grassfield to the &quot;muck 

 yard.&quot; What a scene ! The house the home entirely 

 blanketed by pollard sycamores, looked out between 

 decaying sheds on a nianurial yard and a green stagnant 

 pond almost against the walls. In this space the few 

 milch cows and steers bumped one another about while 

 the auctioneer s man made dear with his stick which was 

 being sold. Even here England s name for good stock 

 was echoed. The British Friesians and Shorthorns were 

 good useful animals, with a hint even of aristocratic 

 lineage ; and at last the auctioneer got the value of his 

 drive home, as he said. Indeed, the prices were reason 

 ably high ; and the neighbours, who had been faithfully 

 filling in the price of every article on their catalogues, 

 found that the. whole added up to three figures just. 



The end of a farm ; the extinction of a homestead is a 

 spectacle melancholy enough, but even the farmers who 

 sold and who bought the relics may have found compen 

 sation in the essential beauty of the scene. The belt of 

 woodland had begun to take on its autumn colours, and 

 it is full of the reddest of trees, the wild cherry. The sun 

 was reflected on the leaves of an immense elm in the 

 centre of the farm, a tree especially beloved of owls, now 

 waiting there for the sun to set completely. The grass- 

 ridged lane that is the only approach to the homestead 

 disappears into a common clothed in juniper, gorse, 



