114. Wild Life in a Southern County. 
ascertain his exact whereabouts; and so his child 
died. Everything possible had been done, but still 
he regretted that this herb had not been applied. 
Nothing is done right now, according to the old 
men of the hamlet ; even the hayricks are built badly 
and ‘scamped.’ The ‘rickmaker’ used to be an 
important person, generally a veteran, who had to be 
conciliated with an extra drop of good liquor before 
he could be got to set to work in earnest. Then he 
spread the hay here, and worked it in there, and 
had it trodden down at the edge, and then. in the 
middle, and, like the centurion, sent men hither and 
thither. His rick, when complete, did not rise per- 
pendicularly, but each face or square side sloped a 
little outwards—including the ends—a method that 
certainly does give the rick a very shapely look. 
But now the new-fangled ‘elevator’ carries up the 
hay by machinery from the waggon to the top, and 
two ricks are run up while they would formerly have 
just been carefully laying the foundation for one of 
faggots to keep off the damp. The poles put up to 
support the rick-cloth interfere with the mathemati- 
cally correct outward slope at the ends, upon which 
the old fellow prided himself; so they are carried 
up straight like the end wall of a cottage, and are a 
constant source of contempt to the ancient invalid. 
However, he consoles himself with the reflection that 
most of the men employed with the « elevator’ will 
ultimately go to a very unpleasant place, since they 
