Bucks' horns, feathers picked up, strange
birds shot and stuffed, fossils from the sand-pits, coins and pottery
from the line of the ancient Roman road, all the odds and ends of the
forest, were scattered about within.
To the yard came the cows, which,
with bells about their necks, wandered into the fern, and the swine,
which searched and rooted about for acorns and beech-mast in autumn. The
men who dug in the sand-pits or for gravel came this way in and out to
their labour, and so did those who split up the fallen trunks into logs.
Now and then a woodpecker came with a rush up from the meadows, where he
had been visiting the hedgerows, and went into the forest with a yell as
he entered the trees. The deer fed up to the precincts, and at intervals
a buck at the dawn got into the garden. But the flies from the forest
teased and terrified the horses, which would have run away with the
heavily loaded waggon behind them if not protected with fine netting as
if in armour. They did run away sometimes at harrow, tearing across the
field like mad things. You could not keep the birds out of the garden,
try how you would. They had most of the sowings up. The blackbirds pecked
every apple in the orchard. How the dead leaves in autumn came whirling
in thousands through rick-yard and court in showers upon the tiles!
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