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Fancy a very large, low house, built in two quadrangles the offices and stables forming the smaller one farthermost from the main entrance of the light gray stone common in Northamptonshire, darkened at the angles and buttresses into purple, and green, and bistre by the storms of three hundred years; on the south side, smooth turf, with islands in it of bright flower-beds, sloped down to a broad, slow stream, where grave, stately swans were always sailing to and fro, and moor-hens diving among the rushes; on the other sides, a park, extensive, but somewhat rough-looking, stretched away, and, all round, lines of tall avenue radiated the bones of a dead giant's skeleton for Kerton once stood in the centre of a royal forest.
If there was a hollow in the oak a pair of starlings chose it, for there was no advantageous nook that was not seized on. Low beside the willow stoles the sedge-reedlings built; on the ledges of the ditches, full of flags, moor-hens made their nests. After the swallows had coursed long miles over the meads to and fro, they rested on the tops of the ashes and twittered sweetly.
These moor-hens fear him not at all; simply because in Hyde Park they are not shot at, and robbed of their eggs or young, nor in any way molested by him. They fear no living thing, except the irrepressible small dog that occasionally bursts into the enclosure, and hunts them with furious barkings to their reedy little refuge.
The solitude, the charming scenery, and the requisite skill, combined to please him. He had a love for nature, and he gratified it in this pursuit. His domain abounded in those bright chalky streams which the trout love. He liked to watch the moor-hens, too, and especially a kingfisher. Lord Montfort came home late one day after much wading.
Some have broad bills, with a white stripe on it, and cry something like the moor-hens at home. Those are razor-bills. And what are those who say "marrock," something like a parrot? The ones with thin bills? they are guillemots, "murres" as we call them in Devon: but in some places they call them "marrocks," from what they say. And each has a little baby bird swimming behind it.
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