Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/220



month has passed. The calendar shows that the midwinter is over, and still the much-dreaded New England cold season has not asserted itself. Such weather as we have had in this last week of June has been mild and reassuring. Certes, there have been days when the western blast bit shrewdly keen, and ordinary garments afforded scant protection. In the coming spring there may be wrathful gales, sleet and hail—snow, even. We must not 'hollo till we are out of the wood.'

In the meantime it is not displeasing to see a trifle of mud again—marshes filling with their complement of water; to hear the bittern boom and the wild drake quack in the reed-bordered pool,—sights and sounds to which I have been a stranger for years and years.

The showers have refreshed the long-dry fallows, and a goodly breadth of wheat is now looking green and well-coloured. But to-day I marked three ploughs in one field, availing of the favourable state of tilth. The ordinary processes of a country neighbourhood are in full swing. Loads of hay, top-heavy and fragrant, meet you from time to time upon the metalled highway. A pony-carriage passes, much as it might do in the narrow lanes of Hertfordshire or Essex. The straggling briar and hawthorn hedges have been trimmed lately. All things savour strongly of the old land, from which the district takes its name. As in England, the guns are now in use and request; and amid my peregrinations it chances that I fall upon a custom of the country, which is partly of the nature of work and partly of play.

Yes, it is a kangaroo drive or battue—a measure rendered