A MIDSUMMER NIGHT 77 



similar note in the distance. When it is renewed, 

 after a short interval, the bird has moved. He 

 travels quickly through the long grass. WeU do 

 you remember how in other days you hunted him, 

 what good sport he made, how fleetly the long legs 

 carried the sMm, brown body, how loth he was 

 to fly, and how heavily he rose. The country- 

 people said, indeed, that his wings were of little 

 use ; that, left to himself, he never used them ; and 

 even that he shed his feathers, and slept through 

 the winter in the rabbit-burrows. Yet not the 

 least of nature's mysteries are the now well-estab- 

 lished wanderings of this familiar land-rail of our 

 homestead meadows. By what strange routes has 

 he been tracked over land and ocean with the waning 

 year, south along the Nile valley, and even across 

 the equator into southern Africa ! And yet, withal, 

 what faithful ardour drives him, that he should 

 retiu-n again to woo his mate and rear his chicks in 

 this grey twihght of our Northern night. 



The path leaves the road and crosses the fields 

 again. The shriU cry of the partridge comes up 

 the breeze. A little while ago, leaving the beaten 

 track, the foot stumbled into a cut thorn-bush on 

 the open ground. Now where the grass is smooth 

 and short the same accident happens again. We are 

 in a land where the love of wild nature has left many 

 a strange mark on character — a land in which respect 

 for law still struggles unsuccessfully with the inborn 

 belief that a man may take wild game and yet scorn 

 to be a thief. The poacher loves these long even 

 slopes as they wiU be later in the year, and the cut 

 thorn-bushes have relation to his visits. The men 

 walk them at night, two abreast £ind far apart. 



