Page:The Life of the Fields, Jefferies, 1884.djvu/134

120 wings extended, dived as a rook will downwards through the air. He twisted from side to side like a coin partly spun round by the finger and thumb, as he came down, rushing through the air head first. The sound of his great vanes pressing and dividing the air was plainly audible. He looked unable to manage his descent; but at the right moment he recovered his balance, and rose a little up into a tree on the summit, drawing his long legs into the branches behind him. The fourth heron fetched a wide circle, and so descended into the wood; two more passed on over the valley—altogether six herons in about a quarter of an hour. They intended, no doubt, to wait in the trees till it was dusky, and then to go down and fish in the river. Herons are called cranes, and heronies are craneries. A determined sportsman, who used to eat every heron he could shoot in revenge for their ravages among the trout, at last became suspicious, and, examining one, found in it the remains of a rat and of a toad, after which he did not eat any more. Another sportsman found a heron in the very act of gulping down a good-sized trout, which stuck in the gullet. He shot the heron and got the trout, which was not at all injured, only marked on each side where the beak had cut it. The fish was cooked and eaten.

This summer evening the bars of golden and rosy cloud gradually lost their bright colour, but retained some purple in the vapour for a long time. If the red sunset clouds turn black, the country people say it will rain; if any other colour, it will be fine. The path from the river led beside the now dusky moor, and the curlew's weird whistle came out of the increasing