United States or Chad ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Messengers rushed to Lucketts' Place; the barn, the sheds, the hayfield, all were searched in vain Hilary had quite disappeared. At the very first sound he had slipped away to look at some cattle in Chequer's Piece, the very last and outlying field of the farms, full a mile away, and when the messengers got to Chequer's Piece of course he was up on the Down.
Besides the meadows around Lucketts' Place, she sometimes wandered further to the edge of Hilary's great open arable fields, where the green corn, before it came out in ear, seemed to flutter, flutter like innumerable tiny flags, as the wind rushed over it.
It was 'that rascal old Aaron; but he could not listen to such a fellow. Hilary would tell me nothing further, having evidently a strong dislike to the man. It seems there were two Aarons uncle and nephew: old Aaron was the arch-poacher of the parish, young Aaron worked regularly at Lucketts' Place.
Just outside the palings of the courtyard at Lucketts' Place, in front of the dairy, was a line of damson and plum trees standing in a narrow patch bordered by a miniature box-hedge. The thrushes were always searching about in this box, which was hardly high enough to hide them, for the snails which they found there.
He had not been down to Lucketts' Place for more than twelve months, and Cicely was resolved to make him promise to come. Though they may be in reality much attached and affectionate, country folk are apt to neglect even their nearest and dearest.
A brown young rascal, however, looking him up he was a tall man with an air of intelligent criticism, audibly remarked, 'Hum! He be very well up to his ankles and then a' falls off! That evening was one of the most beautiful I remember. We all sat in the garden at Lucketts' Place till ten o'clock; it was still light and it seemed impossible to go indoors.
Okebourne Wick, a little hamlet of fifteen or twenty scattered houses, was not more than half a mile from Lucketts' Place; on the Overboro' road, which passed it, was a pleasant roadside inn, where, under the sign of The Sun, very good ale was sold.
If the bird were rare it would be thought to rival the woodcock; as it is, probably few people ever taste it. The path to Lucketts' Place from this rickyard passed a stone-quarry, where the excavated stone was built up in square heaps.
The second shoot of the oak is reddish: there was one oak in the Chace which after midsummer thus became ruddy from the highest to the lowest branch; others did not show the change nearly so much. Lastly came the brown and yellow autumn tints. In the kitchen at Lucketts' Place there was a stool made by sawing off about six inches of the butt of a small ash tree.
Down at Lucketts' Place one winter's night, when folk almost fancied they could hear the roar of Napoleon's cannon, the old fogger came rushing in with the news that the armies could be seen fighting in the heavens. It was an aurora, the streamers shooting up towards the zenith, and great red spots among the stars, the ghastly stains of the wounded.
Word Of The Day