They Were Shorthorns, All But The Leader, A
Beautiful Young Devon, Of A Uniform Rich Glossy Red; But The
Silky
Hair on the distended udder was of an intense chestnut,
and all the parts that were not clothed were red
Too - the
teats, the skin round the eyes, the moist embossed nose; while
the hoofs were like polished red pebbles, and even the shapely
horns were tinged with that colour. Walking straight up to
the old man, she began deliberately licking one of his ears
with her big rough tongue, and in doing so knocked off his old
rakish cap. Picking it up he laughed like a child, and
remarked, "She knows me, this one does - and she loikes me."
Chapter Seventeen: An Old Road Leading Nowhere
So many and minute were the directions I received about the
way from the blessed cowkeeper, and so little attention did I
give them, my mind being occupied with other things, that they
were quickly forgotten. Of half a hundred things I remembered
only that I had to "bear to the left." This I did, although
it seemed useless, seeing that my way was by lanes, across
fields, and through plantations. At length I came to a road,
and as it happened to be on my left hand I followed it. It
was narrow, worn deep by traffic and rains; and grew deeper,
rougher, and more untrodden as I progressed, until it was
like the dry bed of a mountain torrent, and I walked on
boulder-stones between steep banks about fourteen feet high.
Their sides were clothed with ferns, grass and rank moss;
their summits were thickly wooded, and the interlacing
branches of the trees above, mingled with long rope-like
shoots of bramble and briar, formed so close a roof that I
seemed to be walking in a dimly lighted tunnel. At length,
thinking that I had kept long enough to a road which had
perhaps not been used for a century, also tired of the
monotony of always bearing to the left, I scrambled out on the
right-hand side. For some time past I had been ascending a
low, broad, flat-topped hill, and on forcing my way through
the undergrowth into the open I found myself on the level
plateau, an unenclosed spot overgrown with heather and
scattered furze bushes, with clumps of fir and birch trees.
Before me and on either hand at this elevation a vast extent
of country was disclosed. The surface was everywhere broken,
but there was no break in the wonderful greenness, which the
recent rain had intensified. There is too much green, to my
thinking, with too much uniformity in its soft, bright tone,
in South Devon. After gazing on such a landscape the brown,
harsh, scanty vegetation of the hilltop seemed all the more
grateful. The heath was an oasis and a refuge; I rambled
about in it until my feet and legs were wet; then I sat
down to let them dry and altogether spent several agreeable
hours at that spot, pleased at the thought that no human
fellow-creature would intrude upon me. Feathered companions
were, however, not wanting. The crowing of cock pheasants
from the thicket beside the old road warned me that I was on
preserved grounds. Not too strictly preserved, however, for
there was my old friend the carrion-crow out foraging for his
young. He dropped down over the trees, swept past me, and was
gone. At this season, in the early summer, he may be easily
distinguished, when flying, from his relation the rook. When
on the prowl the crow glides smoothly and rapidly through the
air, often changing his direction, now flying close to the
surface, anon mounting high, but oftenest keeping nearly on a
level with the tree tops. His gliding and curving motions are
somewhat like those of the herring-gull, but the wings in
gliding are carried stiff and straight, the tips of the long
flight-feathers showing a slight upward curve. But the
greatest difference is in the way the head is carried. The
rook, like the heron and stork, carries his beak pointing
lance-like straight before him. He knows his destination, and
makes for it; he follows his nose, so to speak, turning
neither to the right nor the left. The foraging crow
continually turns his head, gull-like and harrier-like, from
side to side, as if to search the ground thoroughly or to
concentrate his vision on some vaguely seen object.
Not only the crow was there: a magpie chattered as I came from
the brake, but refused to show himself; and a little later a
jay screamed at me, as only a jay can. There are times when I
am intensely in sympathy with the feeling expressed in this
ear-splitting sound, inarticulate but human. It is at the
same time warning and execration, the startled solitary's
outburst of uncontrolled rage at the abhorred sight of a
fellow-being in his woodland haunt.
Small birds were numerous at that spot, as if for them also
its wildness and infertility had an attraction. Tits,
warblers, pipits, finches, all were busy ranging from place to
place, emitting their various notes now from the tree-tops,
then from near the ground; now close at hand, then far off;
each change in the height, distance, and position of the
singer giving the sound a different character, so that the
effect produced was one of infinite variety. Only the
yellow-hammer remained constant in one spot, in one position,
and the song at each repetition was the same. Nevertheless
this bird is not so monotonous a singer as he is reputed. A
lover of open places, of commons and waste lands, with a bush
or dwarf tree for tower to sit upon, he is yet one of the most
common species in the thickly timbered country of the Otter,
Clyst, and Sid, in which I had been rambling, hearing him
every day and all day long.
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