AN ENGLISH DEER-PARK. 293 
squire, legalising his foible by recognising it, fetched a 
ladder and a hatchet, and chopped off the boughs with 
his own hands. 
It was from the gun-room window that the squire 
observed the change of the seasons and the flow of time. 
The larger view he often had on horseback of miles of 
country did not bring it home to him. The old familiar 
trees, the sward, the birds, these told him of the advan- 
cing or receding sun. As he reclined in the corner of 
the broad window-seat, his feet up, and drowsy, of a 
summer afternoon, he heard the languid cawing of an, 
_., occasional rook, for rooks are idle in the heated hours. 
of the day. He was aware, without conscious observa- 
tion, of the swift, straight line drawn across the sky by 
a wood-pigeon. The pigeons were continually to and 
fro the cornfields outside the wall to the south and the 
woods to the north, and their shortest route passed 
directly over the limes. To the limes the bees went 
when their pale yellow flowers appeared. Not many 
.' butterflies floated over the short sward, which was fed 
too close for flowers. The butterflies went to the old 
garden, rising over the high wall as if they knew before- 
hand of the flowers that were within. Under the sun 
the short grass dried as it stood, and with the sap went 
its green. There came a golden tint on that part of the 
wheat-fields which could be seen over the road. A few 
more days—how few they seemed !—and there was a 
spot of orange on the beech in a little copse near the 
limes. The bucks were bellowing in the forest: as the 
‘leaves turned colour their loves began and the battles 
for the fair. Again a few days and the snow came, and 
rendered visible the slope of the ground. in the copse 
between the trunks of the trees: the ground there was 
at other times indistinct under brambles and withered 
