78 Wild Life in a Southern County. 
works of the old clock for a full hour, if so it please 
you; for the clerk is away labouring in the field, and 
his aged wife, who produced the key of the church 
and pointed the nearest way across the meadow, has 
gone to the spring. The ancient building, standing 
lonely on the hill, is utterly deserted; the creak of the 
boards under foot or the grate of the rusty hinge 
sounds hollow and gloomy. But a streak of sunlight 
enters from the arrow-slit,a bee comes in through the 
larger open windows with a low inquiring buzz; 
there is a chattering of sparrows, the peculiar shrill 
screech of the swifts, and a ‘jack-jack-daw-jack-daw’- 
ing outside. The sweet scent of clover and of mown 
grass comes upon the light breeze—mayhap the 
laughter of haymakers passing through the church- 
yard underneath to their work, and idling by the way 
as haymakers can idle. 
The name of the maker on the clock shows that 
it was constructed in a little market town a few miles 
distant a century ago, before industries were centra- 
lised and local life began to lose its individuality. 
There are sparrows’ nests on the wooden case over it, 
and it is stopped now and then by feathers getting 
into the works : it matters nothing here ; Festina lente 
is the village motto, and time is little regarded. So, 
if you wish, take a rubbing, with heelball borrowed 
from the cobbler, of the inscriptions round the rims 
of the great bells; but be careful even then, for the 
ringers have left one carelessly tilted, and if the ‘rope 
