AN ENGLISH DEER-PARK. 289 
sainfoin (brightest of all on the hills), scarlet poppies, 
pink convolvulus, yellow charlock, and green wheat 
coming into ear. In August, already squares would, be 
cut into the wheat, and the sheaves rising, bound about 
the middle, hour-glass fashion ; some breadths of wheat 
yellow, some golden-bronzc ; besides these, white barley 
and oats, and beans blackening. Turtle-doves would 
be in the stubble, for they love to be near the sheaves. 
The hills after or during rain look green and near; on 
sunny days, a far and faint blue. Sometimes the sunset 
is caught in the haze on them and lingers, like a purple 
veil about the ridges. In the dusk hares come hecdlessly 
along ; the elder-bushes gleam white with creamy petals 
through the night. 
Sparrows and partridges alike dust themselves in 
the white dust, an inch deep, of midsummer, in the road 
between the wall and the corn—a pitiless Sahara road 
to traverse at noonday in July, when the air is still and 
you walk in a hollow way, the yellow wheat on one 
side and the wall on the other. There is shade in the 
park within, but a furnace of sunlight without—weari- 
ness to the eyes and feet from glare and dust. The 
wall winds with the highway.and cannot be escaped. It 
goes up the slight elevations and down the slopes; it 
has become settled down and bound with time. But 
presently there is a steeper dip, and at the bottom, in a 
natrow valley, a streamlet flows out from the wheat intc 
the-park. -A spring rises at the foot of the down a mile 
away, and the channel it has formed winds across the 
plain. It is narrow and shallow; nothing but a larger 
furrow, filled in winter by the rains rushing off the fields, 
and in summer a rill scarce half an inch deep. The 
wheat hides the channel completely, and as the wind 
blows, the tall ears bend over it. At the edge of the 
U 
