the latter part of the trouble; boys and girls groping for
beech-nuts under yonder clump; and a group of younger elves
collecting as many dead leaves as they can find to feed the bonfire
which is smoking away so briskly amongst the trees,--a sort of
rehearsal of the grand bonfire nine days hence; of the loyal
conflagration of the arch-traitor Guy Vaux, which is annually
solemnised in the avenue, accompanied with as much of squibbery and
crackery as our boys can beg or borrow--not to say steal. Ben Kirby
is a great man on the 5th of November. All the savings of a month,
the hoarded halfpence, the new farthings, the very luck-penny, go
off in fumo on that night. For my part, I like this daylight
mockery better. There is no gunpowder--odious gunpowder! no noise
but the merry shouts of the small fry, so shrill and happy, and the
cawing of the rooks, who are wheeling in large circles overhead, and
wondering what is going forward in their territory--seeming in their
loud clamour to ask what that light smoke may mean that curls so
prettily amongst their old oaks, towering as if to meet the clouds.
There is something very intelligent in the ways of that black people
the rooks, particularly in their wonder. I suppose it results from
their numbers and their unity of purpose, a sort of collective and
corporate wisdom. Yet geese congregate also; and geese never by any
chance look wise. But then geese are a domestic fowl; we have
spoiled them; and rooks are free commoners of nature, who use the
habitations we provide for them, tenant our groves and our avenues,
but never dream of becoming our subjects.

What a labyrinth of a road this is! I do think there are four
turnings in the short half-mile between the avenue and the mill.
And what a pity, as my companion observes--not that our good and
jolly miller, the very representative of the old English yeomanry,