178 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
always took their food to a place of safety first. If he 
is alarmed the watcr-rat: instantly dives, and his idea of 
security is a spot where he can drop like a stone under 
the surface without a moment’s reflection. Mr. Hay 
could not understand why the water-rats were so timid 
at this pond till he recollected that the preceding summer 
two schoolboys used to get up in an oak that overhung 
the water, each with a catapult, and, firing bullets from 
these india-rubber weapons on the water-rats underneath, 
slew nearly every one of them. The few left had evi- 
dently learnt extreme caution from the misfortune of 
their friends, and no longer trusted themselves away 
from the water, into which they could slip at the move- 
ment of a shadow. 
Mr. Hay disliked to see the slouching fellows making 
tracks across his fields, every one of which he looked on 
with as much jealousy as if it had been a garden—a 
wild garden they were too, strewn sometimes with the 
white cotton of the plane tree, hung about with roses and 
sweet with mowing grass. Those who love fields and 
every briar in the hedge dislike to see them entered 
irreverently. I have just the same feeling myself even 
of fields and woods in which I have no personal interest ; 
it jars upon me to.see nature profaned. These fellows 
were a‘ Black George’ lot, in hamlet language. Nestor 
Hay knew everybody in the village round about, their 
fathers and grandfathers, their politics and religious 
opinions, and whether they were new fol« or ancient 
inhabitants—an encyclopzedic knowledge not written, an 
Homeric memory. For I imagine in ancient days when 
books were scarce that was how men handed down the 
history of the chiefs of Troy. An Homeric memory for 
everything — superstitions, traditions, anecdotes; the only 
difficulty was that you could not command it. You 
