Cradock Nowell, Vol. 2 (of 3)

ve opened to–day! What delicious Louise Odier, and just look at General Jacqueminot! and I do declare Jules Margottin is finer than he

ver right, although they give the winds sixteen points of the thirty–two to shuffle in. But it so turned

ools of the open furzery: no boys since the time of their great–grandfathers had done the heel–tap in October. But the birds did not appreciate it. What in the world did it mean? Why, there were the hips not ripe yet, and the hollyberries come to no colour, and half the blackberries still too acid, and, lo! it was freezing hard enough to make a worm cold for the stomach, even if you could get

e–shaped spots were bigger. Why, they had not even seen a clumsy short–eared owl flopping out of the dry fern yet-much good might it do him, the fern that belonged to themselves!-nor a single wedge of grey–lag geese, nor a woodcock that knew his busine

of grass, and wait there ever so long, and devil a worm would come up! And, as for the slugs, oh, don?t let me hear of them! Though the thieves had not all got home yet, they were ten degrees to

was there to do?-on the 24th of October, 1859. And they felt the cold rime settling down on grey twig, and good brown leaf. Yet some of the older birds, cocks of long experience, buffers beyond all chaff, pe

ther! Bless my drumsticks and merrythought, I shan?t be s

e in a thousand years will spoil your roost to–morrow night. Think it a mercy if you do not get your very feather

y the parlour–door, at eight o?clock in the morning of that 25th of October. He kissed her white forehead lovingly, accor

t have forgotten to set

since you showed me the way. It was just a little hollow last night, and I moved the

afaring men, especially our poor boatme

, for the distance was only six miles; and now, as his legs were getting stiff, he had bought Cor?bus to help him. Rushford lies towards the eastern end of the great Hurst

And it?s as lovely a morning as ever was seen, and the white frost sparklin

, darling, and come with me to the green room. We can see thence to St. Alban?s Head; but the danger is for those beyond it. All the ships on this si

h showed that it still fell rapidly. But as yet the silver of the frost was sparkling on the lawn, and the morning sun looked up the heavens, as if he f

dredgers were working away at septaria, John and his daughter went to breakfast, hoping th

she had not bowed before her Friend and Maker, the all–giving, the all–loving One, until she had paid her orisons and sung her morning hymn with His own ceiling over her. So now she walked beneath the branches laden with His jewellery, an

lias, bosses quilled and plaited tight, and wrought with depth of colour; and then the elegant asters, cushioned, cochleate, praying only to have their eyes looked into; most of all, her own sweet roses,

h of the things being done around her, any more than I can tell them; for observation grows from as well as begets experience; and the girlish mind (and the boyish too, at any rate for the most part) has very lax and indefinit

e right in doing so. Of the sky she knew less than nothing-although herself well known there; but the trees-come now, she was perfectly sure she knew something about the trees. So

ish. Changing into a doubtful glister, which you must touch to be sure of it, then trickling away into beaded drops, like a tear which will have no denial, it came down the older and harder rime, and perhaps would bring that into its humour, and perhaps would get colder and freeze again into little lumps, like a tap leaking. Then the white fac

now not why-the spangles, the spears, and the crusted flakes, the fairy tinsel, the ermine of dew, the very down of moonlight, the kiss of the sky too pure for snow, and the glittering glance of stars reflected-all

t of the things which we wonder at, instead of at our own ignorance. A flaw of warm air from the north had set in; a lower warp which shot through and threaded the cold south–eastern woof. This is not a common occurrence. Since my vague, unguided, and weak observations began, I have only seen it thrice. And on each of those three times it has been followed by a fearful tempest. Usually, a frost breaks up with a shift of the wind to the south–east, a gradual relaxing, a fusion

to be multiplied into humours of the earth and sea, and the product traversed, indorse

uit rerum cogn

knows when to take

t from it, as a child breathes on the blade of a knife, or on a carriage window. These blots of cloud threw feelers out, and strung themselves together, until a broad serried and serrate bar went boldly across the heavens, from south–east to north–west. It marked

mbodying as it got hold of them; but still there was some white wan sunshine through the mustering cloud–blots and the spattering mud o

eep him in countenance. Over all this, and over the true sun and the cirrhous outrunners, heavily drove at one o?clock the laden

tle in huffs came belloking to the lew of the boughy trees; the hogs ran together, and tossed their snouts, and skittered home from the ovest; the squirrel hied to his hollow dray, the weasel slunk to his tuffet lair, and every rabbit skipped home from grass. The crows and the magpies were

e heathery breastwork, even the depths of forest night-whence common winds shrink back affrighted-even the bastions of Norman oak, s

ice, as they dashed by, and lashing the woodman?s windows. Then a short dark pause ensued, in which the sky s

ree was taken aback, every peat–stack reeled and staggered, every cot was stri

n could stay himself one way, it had caught him up from another. The leaves from the ground flew up again through the branches which had dropped them; and then a c

the turmoil. A pause for sunset; for brave men countless to see their last of sunlight. That evening, the sundown gun from Calshot was heard over all the forest. I remember to have expected fully that the next flaw of air

rush of phalanxed air through a chasm in the firmament. Black, and tossing stone and metal as a girl jerks up her hat–

nd flung into another tree, men caught like chaff from the winnowing and dropped somewhere in pond or gravel–pit, the carrier?s van overthrown on

and we looked for the walls to fall in

ing not to be sent to bed. They had crawled up–stairs to see about it, and the floor came up to them-so they said-like the shifting plate of the oven. The parlour chimney–

o themselves, every time the great stack groaned and laboured so, Miss Eudoxia, full of pluck, was reading aloud-to little purpose, for she scarcely could hear her own voice-

art was thoroughly up for jilting her; and now when she had ventured out-purely of her own self–will-the wind had taken her up anyhow, and whisked her like a snow–flake against

d know it until it came sheer through the ceiling. Amy was pale as the cinders before her, but firm as the bars of iron, and even trying to smile sometimes at the shrieks and queer turns of the tempest. No candle could be kept alight, and the flame of the parlour lamp quivered like a shirt bad

condly because the wind has such purchase upon a man when he is up there on the pommel. So the rector strode off in his stoutest manner, an hour or so before nightfall, and the rain went into him, neck and shoes, before he got to

ing pop like a ball of India–rubber, when he came on a w

d nine–tenths of his voice went to

hat went over the crest of the hill, and leaped into an oak–tree, and was seen no more but of turtle–doves, who built therein nex

ed Bob, with his knees an

e nearest approach to irony that the worst w

oss the wind–brunt. And so, by keeping the covered ways, by running the grooves of the hurricane, they both got safe to Rushford; to

sugar–plums, and Amy, and butterfly–nets, and Queens of Spain, and his father scowling over all, until his brain, at that sensitive time, was like a sirex, trying to get out but stuck fast by the antenn?. Now, Bob, though awake to the little tricks and pleasant ways of Nature, as observed in cricks and crannies, knew nothing as yet of her broader moods, her purging sweeps, her clearances,-in a word, he was a stranger to

wing as hard as ever, the wind had not canted round yet; and the little village of Rushford, upon

it will. His father will be in a dreadful way, and I know what that man

He had not lived upon that coast, fagging out as a cricketer of the Church of England, with his feet and his hands ready always, and his spiked shoes holding the ground,-he had not been on the outside of all things, hoping for innings some day, withou

oor flew open hard enough for a weak man?s legs to go with it. But "Octave" Pell-as he was called, because he would sing, though he could not-the Reverend Octavius was of a sturdy order, well–balanced and steady–going. He drew in his reeking visitors, and dried,

no wise, nor stuck down; neither of the High nor Low Church rut, although an improvement on the old type which cared for none of these things. He did his duty by his parish; and, as follows almost of necessity, his parish l

outh. Those two rooms he rented from old Jacob Thwarthawse, or rather from Mrs. Jacob, for the old man was a pilot on the Southampton Water, and scarcely home twice in a twelvemonth. The little cot looked like a bo

it in Theocritus? John Rosedew could tell,

ched caboose,

murmur swam t

xxi.