Southlands was a mystery, a forbidden garden of delight, with the terror
of an oaken staff (and unknown penalties) turning this way and that.
Therefore the stunted old oak on the verge--the moss-grown merestone by
the pond marked the limit--was so favourite a perching-place.

That beautiful afternoon I leaned both arms idly on the great bough that
crossed in front of the seat and listened to the 'Caw--caw!' of the
rooks as they looked to see if the acorns were yet ripening. A dead
branch that had dropped partly into the brook was swayed continually up
and down by the current, the water as it chafed against it causing a
delicious murmur. This lulled me to sleep.

I woke with a start, and had it not been for the bough crossing in front
must have fallen twenty feet. Looking down into the meadow as soon as my
eyes were thoroughly open, I instantly noticed a covey of young
partridges a little way up beside the hedge among the molehills. The
neighbourhood of those hillocks has an attraction for many birds,
especially in winter. Then fieldfares, redwings, starlings, and others
prefer the meadows that are dotted with them. In a frost if you see a
thrush on a molehill it is very likely to thaw shortly. Moles seem to
feel the least change in the temperature of the earth; if it slackens
they begin to labour, and cast up, unwittingly, food for the thrushes.

It would have been easy to kill three or four of the covey, which was a
small one, at a single shot; but it had been a late summer, and they
were not full-grown. Besides which, they roosted, I knew, about the
middle of the meadow, and to shoot them near the roost would be certain
to break them up, and perhaps drive them into Southlands. 'Good poachers
preserve their own game:' so the birds fed safely, though a pot shot
would not have seemed, the crime then that it would now. While I watched