' COUNTRY PLACES. 175 
Church House to add another thousand tons to the 
enormous weight of ecclesiastical bricks and mortar that 
cumbers the land, would it not be more human to 
signalise the time by the abolition of these cruel laws, 
and by. the introduction of some system to gradually 
, emancipate the poor from the workhouse, which is now 
their master? : 
In the gathering dusk of the afternoon I saw a 
mouse rush to a wall—a thick stone wall,—run up it a 
few inches, and disappear in a chink under some grey 
lichen. The poor , little biter, as the gipsies call the 
mouse, had a stronghold wherein to shelter himself, 
and close by there was a corn-rick from which he drew 
free supplies of food. A few minutes afterwards I was 
interested in the movements of a pair of wrens that were 
playing round the great trunk of an elm, flying from one 
to another of the little twigs standing out from the 
rough bark. First one said something in wren language, 
and then the other answered ; they were husband and 
wife, and after a long consultation they flew to the corn- 
tick and crept into a warm hole under the thatch. So 
both these, the least of animals and the least of birds, 
have a resource, and man is the only creature that 
punishes his fellow for daring to lie down and sleep. 
Up in the plain there were some mounds, or Zusmuli, 
about which nothing seemed to be known, though they 
had evidently been cut into and explored. At last, 
however, a farmer—Mr. Nestor Hay, who knew every-. 
thing—told me something about them... He cut them 
open. He had an old county history and ‘several other 
volumes which had somehow accumulated in the Manor- 
house, Farm, and, like many country people, he was 
extremely fond of studying the past. He fancied there: 
might have been a battle in that locality, and hence 
