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After endeavouring in vain for some time to discover the direction of her "run," they set off, "checking" occasionally, across the stubble, through the root-crop field, and down over the fallow to the bottom of the dingle. There, near a bubbling spring, Puss had hidden since daybreak.

Far back in the childhood of the world, the long-haired savage," woaded, winter-clad in skins," went roaming for his food wherever he might find it. He dug roots from the ground, he searched for berries and fruits, he hid behind rocks to leap upon his living prey, yet often went hungry to his lair at night, if the root-crop were short, or the wild beast wary.

On the left, beyond the hurdles, is a strip of green, perhaps a little out of tone, though I know such colour persists even in very receding lights; and high up on the right the blue night is beginning to show. The sheep are folded in a turnip field, and the root-crop is being eaten down.

Disappointed, the fox turned towards the uplands and crossed the hedgerow into the nearest stubble. Louping leisurely along, he surprised and killed a sleeping lark. Further on he crossed the scent of a hare, but Puss was doubtless some distance away, feeding in a quiet corner of the root-crop field.

At last, impatient of confinement, and desperately hungry, she broke through the snow-drift, and sought the nearest root-crop field, where, after scratching the snow from a turnip, she was able to make a hearty meal.

For months nothing had occurred to disturb the peace of his woodland home. Once, about a year ago, he had fled for his life before the hounds; and again, during the last autumn, while lying hidden in the ditch of the root-crop field above the pines, he had been surprised by two sheep-dogs that nipped him sorely before he could make good his escape.

Sometimes they wandered in the corn and root-crop, or in the hayfield where the sorrel, a cooling medicinal herb for many of the woodland folk, grew long and succulent; and sometimes they descended the steep cattle-path on the far side of the farm, where the big dor-beetles, as plentiful there as in the grass-clumps of the open pasture, were easily struck down while they circled, droning loudly, about the heaps of refuse near the hedge.

A gutter for winter drainage, dry and overgrown with grass, formed a tunnel in the hedge-bank between the corn and the root-crop field beyond; and through this gutter the leveret, when at night she grew hungry, could steal into the dense tangle of thistles and nettles fringing the turnips, thence, between the ridges under the wide-spreading leaves, to the narrow pathway dividing the rape from the root-crop, and across the field to a furrow where sweet red carrots, topped with dew-sprinkled plumes, tempted her dainty appetite.

Its culture and treatment are precisely like those of the parsnip; but the roots should be gathered and stored before a severe frost occurs. For home use a short row of the Early Horn will answer; for the general crop, sow the Long Orange. Vegetable-oyster, or salsify, is another root-crop which may be treated precisely like the parsnip, and the seed sown at the same time.