Winter at Hazelbarn. 157 



the Tenth Commandment, are of themselves sufficient to 

 engross you till the placid call from the grey church-tower 

 floats leisurely and clearly, with jackdaw accompaniments, 

 over the fields, and filters musically through the fir planta- 

 tion outside the kitchen-garden. The actual news which, 

 like that other staff of life, should never be too stale, will 

 occupy the rest of the day's leisure. You may, nevertheless, 

 judge what an accumulation of wholesome Sunday literature 

 is piled up by the season when we have thrashed the walnut- 

 tree, laid bare the flower-beds, and put the winter crops in 

 order. 



Shooting must not be omitted in the list of aids to pre- 

 servation during winter at Hazelbarn, though we do not 

 rely upon this as half so indispensable a pursuit as angling, 

 of which more presently. It does one's heart good, about 

 the time when the first frosts pearl-powder the fields and 

 hedge-rows, to behold the curate's wife approaching, her good- 

 humoured face made more florid by the November atmo- 

 sphere, and her heels crunching upon the gravel as if they 

 meant business. She has come over to tell me that they 

 are come. 



"They " are the fieldfares. 



We — she, the curate, and I — are fond of a day with them 

 as soon after their arrival as may be, and Mrs. Green Vernon 

 always assumes the duty of keeping her eye upon their 

 movements. Last year, bless her heart ! she was as angry 

 as she well could be with the chattering visitants for appear- 

 ing so early as the middle of October, and she was angry 

 because in the preceding year we had entered into a tre- 

 mendous argument in which she contended that the fieldfare 

 never arrived in this country till after Guy Fawkes' Day. 

 Naturally, when on the 20th of the next October we came 

 upon a great flock feeding upon the berries in the hawthorn 



