on the dust, and there are a few small feathers lying about.

A barley field is within the gate; the mowers have just begun to cut it
on the opposite side. Next to it is a wheat field; the wheat has been
cut and stands in shocks. From the stubble by the nearest shock two
turtle doves rise, alarmed, and swiftly fly towards a wood which bounds
the field. This wood, indeed, upon looking again, clearly bounds not
this field only, but the second and the third, and so far as the eye can
see over the low hedges of the corn, the trees continue. The green lane
as it enters the wood, becomes wilder and rougher at every step,
widening, too, considerably.

In the centre the wheels of timber carriages, heavily laden with trunks
of trees which were dragged through by straining teams in the rainy days
of spring, have left vast ruts, showing that they must have sunk to the
axle in the soft clay. These then filled with water, and on the water
duck-weed grew, and aquatic grasses at the sides. Summer heats have
evaporated the water, leaving the weeds and grasses prone upon the still
moist earth.

Rushes have sprung up and mark the line of the ruts, and willow stoles,
bramble bushes, and thorns growing at the side, make, as it were, a
third hedge in the middle of the lane. The best path is by the wood
itself, but even there occasional leaps are necessary over pools of dark
water full of vegetation. These alternate with places where the ground,
being higher, yawns with wide cracks crumbling at the edge, the heat
causing the clay to split and open. In winter it must be an impassable
quagmire; now it is dry and arid.

Rising out of this low-lying spot the lane again becomes green and