io8 Wild Life in a Southern County 



for a moment of a finish as it is in reality, and not in these 

 gaudy, brilliant colour-studies. 



A thick mist clings in the hollow there by the osier- 

 bed where the pack have overtaken the fox, so that you 

 cannot see the dogs. Beyond, the contour of the hill is 

 lost in the cloud trailing over it ; the foreground towards 

 us shows a sloping ploughed field, a damp brown, with a 

 thin mist creeping along the cold furrows. Yonder, three 

 vague and shadowy figures are pushing laboriously forward 

 beside the leafless hedge; while the dirt-spattered bays 

 hardly show against its black background and through the 

 mist. Some way behind, a weary grey — the only spot of 

 colour, and that dimmed — is gamely struggling — it is not 

 leaping — through a gap beside a gaunt oak tree, whose 

 dark buff leaves yet linger. But out of these surely an 

 artist who dared to face Nature as she is might work a 

 picture. 



The year really commences at Wick farmhouse im- 

 mediately before the autumn nominally begins — nominally, 

 because there is generally a sense of autumn in the atmo- 

 sphere before the end of September. Just about that time 

 there comes a slackening of the work requiring earnest 

 personal supervision. When the yellow corn has been 

 cut and carted, and the thrashing machine has prepared a 

 sample for the markets — when the ricks are thatched, and 

 the steam plough is tearing up the stubble — then the 

 farmer can spare a day or so free from the anxieties of 

 harvest. There is plenty of work to be done ; in fact, the 

 yearly rotation of labour may be said to begin in the 

 autumn too, but it does not demand such hourly attention. 

 It is the season for picnics — while the sun is yet warm and 

 the sward dry — on the downs among the great hazel copses, 

 or the old entrenchment, with its view over a vast land- 



