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The little old castle, which had got a little blurred in my recollection, seemed suddenly remembered and familiar, even as had been the case with the country I had driven along from the station; the undulating turnip-fields and fields of pale stooked corn, the reaping-machines and the women tying up the bean-straw, the white line of the Forth, and the whole pale, delicate country under the low, tender, intimate northern sky.

The taking of Melle would be a sign to us that the game was up. For three days Jimmy operated joyously in the village and over the leagues of turnip-fields that lay outside it.

He has actually kept the 1st of September clear of shooting parties that he may take these two boys out, and give them a thorough day's sport in his turnip-fields. "License? Nonsense, he thought of that before, and now Aubrey may get some shooting out of George Rivers."

And he drove his team merrily onwards. The dun cows stopped of themselves when they reached their destination. Franz Vogt smiled. Yes, this must be a thorn in the flesh for the lord of the manor! The corn-patch was small; but it stretched out amid the turnip-fields like a long arm that could hold its own, and that would not brook encroachment.

The descendant of many generations of broom-squires and deer-stealers, the instinct of sport is strong within him still, though no more of the king's deer are to be shot in the winter turnip-fields, or worse, caught by an apple-baited hook hung from an orchard bough.

At any rate, the silent, solitary, and comparatively still character of their pursuit enables them to study and appreciate beauty of scenery more than the violent exercise and excitement of fox-hunting, whatever may be said in favor of the picturesque influences of beating preserves and wading through turnip-fields with keepers and companions more or less congenial.

The fat farmer stands so thoroughly well in his daily habit; the great stomach, how well it is drawn, and the short legs are part and parcel of the stomach. The man is redolent of turnip-fields and rick-yards; all the life of the fields is upon him. And the long parson, clearly from the university, how well he clasps his hands and how the very soul of the man is expressed in the gesture!

She would trudge whole half-days with him and the keepers, after luncheon, beating the plantations and pacing the turnip-fields to start and bring down birds, and she would be sauntering with him on the terrace and in the park after dinner all the same.

It was a brisk October morning, the sportsman's gun and whistle re-echoing from the hill sides; where here and there appeared the dogs careering along over green turnip-fields or across amber stubble.

Having loitered to my heart's content amid the stillness of the old church, and paced to and fro above the illustrious dead, I set out, with the sun about an hour high, to see the house of Anne Hathaway at Shottery, shunning the highway and following a path that followed hedge-rows, crossed meadows and pastures, skirted turnip-fields and cabbage-patches, to a quaint gathering of low thatched houses, a little village of farmers and laborers, about a mile from Stratford.