Page:The Knife.pdf/22

136 for the last twenty years. It was one of those beautiful days with which October abounds more than any other month; a soft west-wind expanded the few late flowers that yet made glad the more sheltered nooks; the oaks, beeches, and chestnuts (for the country was densely wooded), still wore their richest and darkest green; while the limes and sycamores contrasted them strongly with their bright red and vivid yellow. Haymaking and harvest had long been over; so that little of rustic employment remained in the fields, whose stillness was almost unbroken. Now and then, as Mr. Harvey rode slowly along scenes so familiar to him, he was startled from his reverie by the sudden rise of a covey of birds in an adjacent field; or, in passing a secluded copse, the glossy plumage of the pheasant caught his eye, while the air was stirring with the sound of its loud and peculiar flight; and sometimes, faint and echoing in the distance, came the report of the solitary sportsman's gun, "few and far between." It was in a little lonely lane, girded on one side by a thick wood almost entirely composed of young oaks, and on the other by a grass-field and then a garden, both belonging to a small farmhouse. There was an aspect of comfort and neatness, which spoke well for the inhabitants; a pear-tree covered the front that faced the road, and the porch was overgrown with Chinese roses, so