In the West Country

by Francis A. Knight

Even after sundown life is still stirring. Long after the mists of evening have begun to gather on the darkening hills the cuckoo calls. The musical halloo of wandering owls breaks in through the vespers of the blackbird, and the shrill challenge of the black-cock sounds loud on the fringe of the moorland. Instead of the swallows, that all day float singing round the eaves, the bats come out of hiding in old barns and ruinous outbuildings, and flutter on silent wings through vacant windows.

In the twilight even the wild red deer stray down from their fastness to the very precincts of the garden. It is not long since, in the hind-hunting time, the "tufters" broke away after a stag and followed it, in spite of all the efforts of the huntsmen, far across the moor and down into the lowland. And, when at length the hounds were beaten off, two sheep-dogs from the village took up the chase and drove the stag up here to the Manor House. There it stood for hours in a narrow passage near the stables, showing a bold front to its pursuers, and undismayed by the curious villagers who came thronging up to gaze at it—a noble beast, with all its honours. Someone at length opened the door of an empty stable, and the stag walked quietly in. Tired out with the long chase over the slopes of Dunkery, it stayed in its strange asylum two days and nights, entirely unmoved by efforts to dislodge it, but lowering its antlers in a moment if one of its visitors made an attempt to cross the threshold; though when one of the men, thinking it had gone, went into the stable after dark and actually brushed against it, the stag, happily for him, took no notice. The door was left open; the noble beast was free to go when it would. On the third morning the stable was empty; the strange guest had gone. A line of footprints across the lawn to the fence that parts the garden from the paddock, and up the long meadow towards the hanger, showed how it had made its way back unmolested to its haunt upon the moor.

Guests almost as strange are two wild ducks that built a nest in a pool in the field below the house. The eggs were hatched not many days since, and the young brood were caught and given in charge to a hen, who, so far, has proved herself but an indifferent foster-mother. The drake, after the manner of his kind, has another mate, and she is still sitting on her eggs on a small island in another pond near by. And he and the mother of the lost family still linger about the farm. You may see them flying past the windows on their way down from one of the moorland streams, or watch them in the meadow by the empty nest. Or you may even chance upon them among the outbuildings, the drake a little way in advance, walking slowly forward, looking this way and that, pausing now and then at some strange sound; while his sober-tinted mate follows meekly a yard or so behind him. Now they stand doubtful, uncertain whether or no it is safe to enter the precincts. At length they venture in. Now walk quietly after them. There they stand, a gallant pair, he splendid with the rich green velvet of his glossy head, the white ring about his neck, the dark chocolate of his breast, his brilliant orange legs, and all the exquisite shades of grey upon his beautiful back: she with quiet plumage, streaked and mottled with soft tones of brown, looking for all the world like a dry heap of reeds and withered sedges. In a moment they are aware of danger. They move closer together. The drake utters a low warning call, nodding his head, slowly at first, then faster and faster until, with a loud note the two birds spread their beautiful wings, wheel round the house, and sail down to their old haunt by the pool.

By the same pool, not fifty yards from the road, there is another nest—a moorhen's; and if you creep quietly up you may see the old bird on her nest of rushes under the bank, her dark figure looking little more than a patch of shadow in the heart of the bramble bush that overhangs her home. Her, too, you may watch in the early mornings wading among the long grass of the meadow, or you may even catch a glimpse of her as she paddles fast across the pool, keeping time with her glossy head to the rapid movement of her feet.

Hood has told us how, in his "Haunted House,"

"A wren had built within the porch, she found

The quiet loneliness so sure and thorough."

It is almost more strange that here a pair of chaffinches have made a sanctuary of this porch, and have built their nest just over the door, within arm's reach of every passer-by. It is an exquisite work of art, whose moss and lichen, felted with cobwebs and fine strands of wool fitted deftly on the curve of a level larch pole, and woven among the young shoots of the climbing rose tree, whose leaves hang down as if to hide it, might have escaped notice altogether were it not that the little builders are busy all day upon the grass before the windows, now taking short flights among the laurels or the branches of the old arbutus, or the great bay tree that overhangs the lawn, scenting all the air with its abundant bloom, and that now and then they fly up to their nest over the doorway.

A far retreat—a spot in which the lover of nature would only too gladly settle down, content, amid this gracious scenery and these pleasant sights and sounds, to end his days in one of the little old-world cottages of "the sweetest village in the world," with their tiny windows, their quaint gables, their roofs of russet thatch. A far retreat, upon whose dreamlike quiet no ripple of unrest could surely enter.

We can hardly realise that it was a lord of this very manor who, though long past his three score years and ten, held a fortress for King Charles until the last extremity, marching out at length with all the honours of war.