grew and withered in their destined terms: and all upon the fierce
and bloody battle-ground, where thousands upon thousands had been
killed in the great fight. But, there were deep green patches in
the growing corn at first, that people looked at awfully. Year
after year they re-appeared; and it was known that underneath those
fertile spots, heaps of men and horses lay buried,
indiscriminately, enriching the ground. The husbandmen who
ploughed those places, shrunk from the great worms abounding there;
and the sheaves they yielded, were, for many a long year, called
the Battle Sheaves, and set apart; and no one ever knew a Battle
Sheaf to be among the last load at a Harvest Home. For a long
time, every furrow that was turned, revealed some fragments of the
fight. For a long time, there were wounded trees upon the battle-
ground; and scraps of hacked and broken fence and wall, where
deadly struggles had been made; and trampled parts where not a leaf
or blade would grow. For a long time, no village girl would dress
her hair or bosom with the sweetest flower from that field of
death: and after many a year had come and gone, the berries
growing there, were still believed to leave too deep a stain upon
the hand that plucked them.

The Seasons in their course, however, though they passed as lightly
as the summer clouds themselves, obliterated, in the lapse of time,
even these remains of the old conflict; and wore away such
legendary traces of it as the neighbouring people carried in their
minds, until they dwindled into old wives' tales, dimly remembered
round the winter fire, and waning every year. Where the wild
flowers and berries had so long remained upon the stem untouched,
gardens arose, and houses were built, and children played at
battles on the turf. The wounded trees had long ago made Christmas