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made angry by a boy's play. Oh for an unruffled spirit!" Lina hid her face in her hands: when she raised it from the prayer, it was serener.

"There goes Saint Lina from all her good works!" Frank exclaimed, as she emerged from the door. "A fig for the good works that don't help one to keep one's temper!" he added, mischievously, observing the sudden flush that mounted to her forehead. Lina paused as if to speak: he held up his hand as though to ward off a blow, and retreated, laughing in his mocking way.

A calm cold afternoon settled upon the world. Haze thickened from the broad sea like frozen breath, and hung over the low sun a reddening veil of vapour. The Golden Hill-so called from a tradition of extinct mines-was purple and violet, because of its much heather; but the buildings on its lower slope-Lina's home-were ruddy with the westering gleams of day. A spur of the hill was protection against the full sweep of the seawind; but before Mr. Kingston's house was a wide bay, fringed with brown cliffs on the farther 1 side, which cliff's were perforated with caves and deep inlets, into whose recesses the waves rolled - thunderingly evermore. White patches of snow, which had fallen with the coming of the new year, e and were still unmelted, diversified the faded fields. Lina walked rapidly, in the face of this view, by a narrow road leading to the shore. In the curve of the bay was a fishing village of some two-score straggling cottages, and a solitary pier stretching out into the blue water, at which a pilot-boat lay s moored.

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On the beach the slow-coming tide washed over round pebbles, and drew them back again in its reflex, with a rolling sound like summer thunder. A knot of boys, chief among whom was Frank, were looking at something intently. The object of curiosity was a stranded fish-a broad monster, more than half jaws, and having a bunch of threadlike filaments growing from its head. Frank recognised the creature as the fishing-frog, which burrows in the sand with bird-like claws, to lie in wait for prey, having its filaments floating above as baits. Frank felt proud of his knowledge, and of his audience, though only ragged boys; but, seeing Lina, he hailed her with an halloo.

"Where are you going to? Is it for a walk? Don't look cross if I say I'll go with you: it's your duty to welcome your brother with open arms. Let us come and see the Puffing Caves; they are in grand action to-day. Look, there's a jet !"

He pointed to a column of white vapour shooting some sixty feet into the air, from behind a promontory at a little distance. "Do come, Lina; Brennan says they're magnificent to-day; the swell is right in from the south-west."

"I was walking to meet papa and William," she said.

"And I know they'll come by the shore road," he added eagerly. "They always prefer it; and papa will be sure to remember that the caves are puffing to-day, and will want to see them. can see the car pass from the cliff."

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"But we could not stand in the cold, Frank: I think it is freezing already." Lina shivered.

"Here, take my comforter:" he had it half unwound before she could protest: "I am all in a glow. I ran down from the hill. Girls are so chilly, always! There's Laura has not stirred from the fire all day."

Lina scarcely heard his chattering, as they walked along rapidly. A common anxiety engrossed her one which had lain down and risen up with her for many a day-concerning her father's safety. For the times were perilous in Ireland; men's lives were of little value in the eyes of the lawless Riband tribunal, which held the country under a reign of terror. The newspapers were filled with outrage and assassination, every week some new tales of murder blotting out the old with more horrifying details; and never did her father or brother spend a day from home, but the hearts left behind were pained with anxiety. Lina bore much of the burden alone, for the subject was not spoken of; the interests involved were too agonizing for common speech.

Frank threw himself on the rock, to listen to the reverberation of the surge rolling into deep caverns far beneath. "Isn't it splendid? Just listen to the grand roar!"

They stood where the falling spray, from the momentarily dissolving vapour pillar, could not touch them. Onward came a great green wall of water, whitening at top, through every shade of aquamarine, into snowy foam; it swept majestically into the yawning caves; an explosion, and a white jet was forced upwards by the confined air, thirty feet over the cliff; and when the surge reached the narrowest-mouthed and inmost of the caves, the solid rock was shaken by the energy of its repulsion, and a column of fine white vapour was hurled aloft, nearly seventy feet into the air.

Lina was always silent when much impressed: she had now no words to corroborate Frank's ecstacies. She looked on in a kind of fascination, till Frank proclaimed that the car was coming.

Lina met her father with a tight pressure of the hand, which caused him to look at her particularly. His was a quiet breezeless face; one which resembled, curiously, such a frosty evening as this-clear-cut, composed features, with a keen, steady eye beneath the bronzed forehead. could have told that a heart of iron bravery beat under that broad breast. From his front pocket projected the shining muzzle of a revolver.

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He walked over upon the cliff, to look at the sea. "I am glad you have returned so early, papa : how did the court business get on ?"

"The prisoners were committed for trial," he said. Then, after a pause of looking at his daughter's face, where anxiety was very legible, he added: "I am not afraid to do my duty, Lina; and you must not let your little heart be perturbed by possibilities, which are not probabilities. I trust in Providence."

Mr. Kingston stood on the very verge of the cliff, and gazed down into the boiling eddies in front of the caves, and a dark expression grew over his face; the lines between his brows deepened. No pleasant subject of recollection produced that sternness. "What is the matter with papa, Willie " Lina

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CHAPTER II.-BEFORE SUNRISE.

MR. KINGSTON's office was at the back of his house, and had a separate entrance. It was a businesslike apartment, with a counter running across near the outer door, and desks within; cases full of great leather-bound ledgers, and walls adorned with almanacs, local maps, and notices of various kinds, having dust in their creases. And there is a skeleton clock swinging away in one corner, which presently strikes six. Being an orderly, well-conducted timepiece, of sound constitution, rarely known to lose or gain a minute in the course of its existence, you may rely upon it that six is the hour by the heavenly bodies, if circumstances permitted any of them to be visible. We have reason to believe that the Polar Star and Charles's Wain are as usual; but they look upon an earth wrapped in snow-clouds. As for the sun, he is shining, as yet, on Mount Egmont, in New Zealand, in the evening of a summer's day; his rays slant on the arid plains of Central Australia; he reflects himself in coral lagoons of the Pacific. Naturally, he is reluctant to come round here, and looked from the soiled gray sky upon a landscape of leaden sea and white land.

It was a few minutes past six when Mr. Kingston unlocked his study door, and entered. A fire had been laid ready for kindling; with matches and papers he made it blaze up speedily. Falling flakes of snow sputtered into it, which had lost their way down the chimney. Moodily he sat and looked at the flame, leaning back in a leathern arm-chair the while, the candle guttering down at his elbow, because of a draught from the open office door. Gleams of the light flash back from the bright long barrel of a rifle, lying in brackets over the mantelpiece. A shot-pouch and powder-horn are fitting pendants at either side. Between them hangs a peaceful water-colour view of the Lower Lake of Killarney, suggestive of some rich August sunset.

This room resembles its owner's mind; which is the case with many rooms which men adorn for themselves to live in. Not much of anything that is not practical and useful is here. Writing materials are on the green cloth, and red-backed books stand in orderly ranks, promising no more interesting literature than accounts, and rent-rolls, and maps of townlands. An open blotting-sheet bears the impression chiefly of the firm, strong signature R. B. KINGSTON, in every variety of diagonal, as each autograph chanced to be printed down upon it. Yesterday's letters are here, under the weight of a bronze greyhound couchant; and one of them is, I suspect, the cause of Mr. Kingston's early rising this morning.

A very ill-written, ill-spelt document, on copy paper, with a drawing, more spirited than correct, of a blunderbuss at top, a skull and cross-bones

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Mr. Kingston examined it closely; saw where the paper had been torn from a larger sheet, with symptoms of having been perhaps sewed into a book, once; took a letter from a bundle labelled in a drawer, and compared both, selecting the same words in each, and noting the special forms of spelling peculiar to each. "No, no," he said aloud, "not resemblance enough to found any charge. All these fellows' writing is like the schoolmaster's that taught them; it has no idiosyncrasy."

A tap came to the door: Mr. Kingston folded up the paper quietly. It might have been any friendly letter, by the unembarrassed countenancel which looked round, and saw Lina entering, bearin a little tray.

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Papa, I've made a cup of chocolate for you; feared you might not be well; I heard you coming down-stairs."

"Thank you, my daughter."

Lina was timid: she felt as if she had intruded. When the chocolate had been five minutes neglected, she found opportunity to observe: "It cools quickly, papa; I think you will say it is good when you try it.”

He drank it absently, and bade her bring her books, or work, and sit with him; which done, he took no further notice of her, but sat writing rapidly, covering sheet after sheet with his large decisive handwriting.

By and by he said, speaking so suddenly that she started: "Could you find time to copy this? Your doing so will save William the trouble, and will oblige me."

She was glad to be able to do anything for him. In a clear, clerkly hand, she proceeded to transcribe; her father had given her a few writing lessons in the neglected points of legibility and compactness. Eight struck by the accurate office clock before she had ended, and closed the book marked "Confidential Correspondence." Something connected with that copying had caused her eyes to fill and her face to colour, as she bent over it.

"Papa, if the people knew that you write for them in this way! But they don't; they think you hard and stern, papa; they do not know your kind, kind heart." Lina's lips trembled, and she turned away her face.

"Look here," he said, showing her another sheet. It was a letter, short and decided, to a bailiff residing near the farm occupied by John Carmody, informing him that, on a day named, the sub-sheriff would be at Ballymore, to evict various families for non-payment of rent. This is the side of papa's character that the people see, Lina; you will allow that they have reason, seeing no farther, to think me severe. I cannot show disapprobation of Mr. Everest's proceedings openly

66

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no matter what I may think of them. Indeed,
Mr. Everest can hardly help himself: his estates
are heavily encumbered, and his expenses large."
"But if the tenants knew that it was not your
fault-

"Impossible; John Carmody imagines that if
he could get speech of Mr. Everest, he could pre-
vail on him to remit all arrears. I bear the odium
of everything."

66

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where
t, with
Don't trouble your little head about it," he
into
said, lightly: it was a favourite phrase with him.
"Tell me,
abelled
how gets on your school? Remember
g the there are pens and copy-paper in the office, when-
rms of ever the pupils are sufficiently advanced. Thank
aloud you for this morning's work, Lina." And she felt
e. All sufficiently rewarded by one of her father's rare,
's that bright smiles.

"It is hard that you should, papa!"

A little before noon, when the sun asserted itself folded in the hazy heavens as a spot of weak brightness, -n any a countryman came up the avenue. A stronglyenance built, black-browed Celt he was, with a slouch in earin his broad shoulders, and a furtive look about his small eyes.

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Here's Carmody of Ballymore," said Mr. Short, oming the chief clerk, setting his spectacles up on his forehead. "He's a bad chap, and there's nothing for him but the turn-out. They say he's a sworn Ritruded band-man-ch, Michael ?"—which, being addressed sneg to a subordinate, received an immediate assent, "I after the manner of subordinates in general. is good don't like to have much to say to those Ribandmen, they're dangerous customers," said Mr. Short, ng he with a grimace and shrug. Both had subsided 1 done into blandness, when the door swung to after the How are you, John ?" said Mr. Short, writing new-comer. s larg with friendliness; "cold weather, this." An original observation, and altogether unlikely to occur to ordinary minds from a survey of external nature, which Mr. Short had addressed to every one, from Mr. Kingston down to Nelly the housemaid, whom he had met that morning; and which he would perseveringly address to every one whom he should meet, till bed-time.

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butcher's knife. The broad grain-bearing slopes and the wide pastures are all comfortably asleep under a counterpane of snow; and the land, like its owners, while it rests in slumber, gathers vigour from repose. The field labours of the husbandman are comparatively few, and his industry at this season is mostly concentred round his homestead, where his oxen feed in the stalls; and the thumping flail in his barns, or haply the steamengine in the shed, threshes out the produce of last year's harvest. Whether the farmer patronizes steam or not, there is an atmosphere of steam around his dwelling just now; for the cattle steam in their sheds, the sheep in their folds, the horses move about in a mist of their own exhaling; and while "Marian's nose looks red and raw,' mouth emits a volume of steam in panting jets, as she brings in the foaming pails to the dairy, or pumps away energetically at the churn, to elaborate butter for the market.

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This season of partial leisure is not uncommonly, to the well-to-do farmer, one of generous hospitality and of bracing out-door recreations. In these days of railroads and rapid locomotion, this is much more the case than it was with the last generation. Town and country cousins are now much more closely knit together than they were in the days of yore; they see cach other oftener; the man of the glebe and furrow runs up to town at the tail of the iron steed whenever inclination goads him, while "Ihe of the mart and the exchange returns the visit as spontaneously at the convenience or the whim of the moment. January gives plenty of opportunity to them; both find business stagnating around them, and both as naturally turn for excitement to country sports. So Brown, of the Borough, writes down to Dobbs, of Tangley Grange, to say that he is coming; and (being a sports. man) as soon as he can manage to clean out his double-barrel, and lay in a stock of ammunition, he follows his letter, without waiting for an answer, well knowing that he will be doubly welcome. Pending his preparations, however, his sleepingpartner, Podgers, hears of his intention, and intimates that he has a mind to accompany him. "The more the better," says Brown; and so off they go, perhaps taking three or four city friends along with them.

Mr. Kingston had seen the arrival of his visitor, and took down the shining rifle from its brackets,

fore she with an odd smile on his face, and went into the

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THE MONTHS IN THE COUNTRY.

JANUARY.

They get down to Tangley in good time for dinner a dinner served in Dobbs's stone-floored kitchen, and eaten by the light of tallow candles, fixed in chandeliers of prickly holly, mingled with sprigs of the watery-looking mistletoe-relics of the past Christmas. Over their heads are huge racks stuffed with portly hams, salted pigs' faces, says, "As the days begin to lengthen, the cold and ponderous chines; and in the vault of the anoth begins to strengthen," is, for the most part, a true cavernous chimney the brawny flitches are hanging 1. to saying, and the first month of our year may be in clusters, imbibing flavour from the smoke of the Job regarded as the coldest and the quietest season of monster logs, blazing on the hearth. The table ed, the the whole twelve. The country-side puts on a groans with good cheer, in such plethoric abundance variou remarkable and a most impressive stillness. The that Brown and Co. are in a state of admiration, is the birds are dumb; of the insects, whole tribes are e, Lin silent, while other tribes are dead as well as dumb;

thin THE new year opens in the grasp of winter, which w you generally deepens in severity and intensity as the and sh days of January advance. The old distich which

eing

the cattle are mute and undemonstrative, turn

how di ing a patient face on the exigencies of their lot, open and submitting to be artificially fattened for the

and cannot imagine how it is all to be disposed of. Cut and come again makes scarcely any perceptible impression on the mass of the viands. After the meal, they adjourn to the parlour, and there, round the fire, discuss the news of the day, the gossip of

down the brood hens, at the imminent risk of being captured as a poacher, which would most assuredly have been the case had the gamekeeper come that way. While rejoicing at the cockney's fortunate escape, Dobbs is yet vexed beyond measure at his blunder; but he is too considerate to reprove his guest, and concludes that the best way, for the present, is to say nothing about it. Such amends as he can make to the squire he does make, by despatching, on the following day, a double hamper of the game shot to the hall, for his landlord's accept

the district, and those phases of political affairs | squire's preserves, where he has been knocking which affect most their own interests. There is no intemperate drinking: thanks to the march of social reform, that ancient vice is no longer, as it once was, a bucolic institution. Hilarity and sobriety now join hands, and a man is allowed to be as abstinent as he will, without incurring the suspicion of being anything but a good fellow. They go early to bed-earlier, indeed, than Brown and Co. have a partiality for; but the truth is, that Dobbs, and Mrs. D. too, who always rise at five, winter and summer, except when they rise an hour or two carlier, have been nodding in their chairs ever since the clock struck ten; and the whole of the rest of the household have been in bed an hour ago. "Good night, cousin," says Brown; "don't call me before it's light, there's a good fellow. Good night, Mrs. D." Good night," in chorus all round, with a gathering of chamber candles -and off go all to "Bedfordshire."

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Next morning, Brown and his partner start to enjoy what is commonly called "a day's sport;" but, in the course of their excursion, Podgers separates from him, with the understanding that they are to meet at a given rendezvous. Brown makes his appearance at the time appointed, but what has become of Podgers? The refreshments are fast disappearing, and still no Podgers. "Podgers, ahoy!" shouts Brown, at the top of his voice; but there is no answering cry from Podgers, and what has become of him it is vain to guess. Waiting for him, however, is out of the question. It will take two hours to get back to the farm, and by that time the sun will be level with the horizon, and Mrs. D. will have dinner ready. So now Brown starts back again, anxiously hoping that he may pick up Podgers by the way. It is getting dark as he proaches the farm, where other parties have already

arrived; but no Podgers.

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Brown, growing exceed

ingly anxious, runs to an eminence near at hand, for a look round. Far down to the right he sees a bulky figure, hardly discernible in the dusk, which looks big enough for three men bundled into one. It can't be Podgers; and yet it must be he, for that is his dog, coming bounding forward with reeking throat and lolling tongue, and leaping on Brown, whom he knows as well as he does his master.

When the dusk figure comes up, it proves to be Podgers sure enough, amplified to that enormous size by the dead bodies of pheasants, hung about him in such numbers that he can hardly stagger

under them.

"Whew!" says Podgers, as he casts down his spolia opima, "there's the fruit of my day's work: what do you think of that ?"

"A dreadful slaughter you have made, to be sure; but I say, Podgers, they are nearly all hens." "What does that signify? I took 'em as they came a pheasant's a pheasant, isn't it?"

Dobbs, who comes up at this juncture, stands aghast at the sight of Mr. Podgers's performances. The spectacle of thirteen hen pheasants, and only three cock birds, sets him tickling his left ear in rather a peculiar way. At last he finds out, by skilful cross-questioning, that Mr. Podgers has wandered off the farmer's grounds into the

ance.

With a hearty dinner, and a pleasant evening, the day's recreation ends; and next morning Brown and Co. and Podgers, well loaded with the spoils of the war, dash off by train for London, where they publish their prowess by distributing the results among their friends.

Such is a day's shooting at Tangley Grange, or at least such it happened to be when we last participated in the sport. If it should be urged that it is cruel to sacrifice so many innocent lives for the pleasure of the sportsman, we would ask in reply, what is Dobbs to do with his game? is he to let "The merry brown hares come leaping

Over the brow of the hill,"

until they have eaten half his green crops? or arc the pheasants to have free toll of his corn, until they The truth of the case is, that the game must be kept are numerous enough to devour the whole of it? under, or the land cannot be profitably tilled or the people fed; and really the writer is of opinion, with Fowell Buxton, that there may be neither impropriety nor shame in deriving pleasure and health by the performance of a necessary act.*

frost deepens, and so does the silence that broods As January grows older, we usually find that the

ice, the babbling brook is struck dumb, and if the

over the land; for now the rivulets are choked with

river yet runs on, it runs under an icy platform, and
its voice is no longer heard. It was on a morning
towards the close of January, in our young days,
when the ice had far more charms for us than it
has
now, that we set off to skate eleven miles to
breakfast, starting half an hour before dawn. We
had left the town some miles in the rear, and the
dawn was just beginuing to blanch the dull north-
eastern sky, when far in the distance, relieved by
view, the outline of which had long been familiar.
the white rime of the hoar-frost, a figure came into
It was old Pastor P, whose threescore years and
ten had been passed long ago, and whom we should
have imagined snug in his warm bed at such an
hour as that. What could he be doing there,
painfully trudging along the bank at a two-mile-
an-hour pace, in a temperature near zero? We put
the question as we came up. "Ah!" said the good
is dying. I got
pastor, "poor old Morris of H-

a letter last night, and I felt that I must comply

* Game must be destroyed; but notwithstanding the high an thority of Sir Fowell Buxton's name, there are many individuals in Christian circles who entertain doubts as to field-sports being an unobjectionable amusement. The question is an open one.[EDITORS.]

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with his last wish: I hope to be in time." People generally did not give Parson P—— credit for acts of that kind, he being a rather taciturn, anti-gossipping man, who was content to do the right thing without talking about it: he had his reward, if not in the praise of men.

The skater in the country has a different experience from him of the city. Rushing along for miles in his solitary course, where not a sound greets his cars save the echoes of his steel-shod feet, and where, perhaps, for hours together, he sees no signs of animated existence, he is aware of a feeling analogous to that of the lone traveller in some desert region; and he may chance to get a revelation from Dame Nature of a kind which she never accords to the crowd. So it happened on the morning already referred to. We had scarcely parted from the pastor, when we entered on a field of virgin ice, where our own foot-blades left the r first trace of the explorer. The floor we traversed became literally as transparent as crystal, so clear indeed that we seemed skimming the surface of the water, through which the eye could penetrate to the bottom, sometimes as far as twenty feet down. By and by the canal opened into a small lake, surrounded by lofty trees, reflected in the clear ice of winter as they had been in the tranquil C mirror of summer, and whose every branch and y slender twig was clad in a pure white robe woven by the breath of the frost. Gliding over this translucent surface, and looking down into the e depths below, with a sensation of awe not unhmixed with fear, we came right over the summit of a monster water-plant, which, rooted in the hị bottom, twenty feet down, shot out its unnumbered branches, striking their tops against the ice under our feet. The branches seemed all of nearly uniform thickness, about an inch in diameter; the leaves were of the shape of those of the mistletoe, but larger, and there were berries at their insertions, also larger than the mistletoe-berries. The colour of the whole plant, branch, leaf, and fruit, wasta kind of jaundiced buff, but pale and ghastly, and appalling from its skeleton-like form, hue, and stillness. We confess that we had not courage to scan it very minutely, and, after a few minutes' wonder, ran away from it and the uncomfortable feelings it excited. What is the name of this subaqueous plant? Is there such a thing as a gigantic water-mistletoe, thirty feet in diameter, which grows entirely beneath the surface? and if not, what was the singular apparition which greeted us on that wintry morning? All else that we recollect of that solitary trip is the fact that we did the eleven miles within the hour, ate a hearty breakfast, and got back to the town by the same route before ten o'clock.

It is a sad time for the birds, this ice-bound Jaunary. Multitudes of the smaller and more help less species are starved or frozen to death-a fact which is not generally recognised, but the truth of which we can verify from the observation of many seasons. Numbers of our song birds which build in trees take refuge in winter in the close covert afforded by the reeds and sedge on the margins of Here, when the streams are frozen,

the streams.

man.

they often perish, and here we have found them again and again, after frosts of long duration. Now it is that many birds which, during the rest of the year, are very shy of man, are seen to approach his dwelling, compelled by hunger and cold: the thrush, the blackbird, the jay, the chaffinch, the yellow-hammer, the bullfinch, will now imitate the robin in claiming a pittance from the householder; and even birds which one never sees at all in the summer will come fluttering about the house for a dole, and beg the hospitality of Next to the robin, the little wren is the most persevering and independent visitor; his "chick, chick," is always heard in the nearest hedge, and he may be seen hopping about not a yard from the ground, and industriously foraging all the day long. In this country nobody thinks of molesting him, as there is a time-honoured prejudice in his favour; and even if he is accidentally caught in the flap-nets when sparrows are hunted in the ricks, the farmer's boy will let him go again, thinking it a crime to kill him. Master Wren, however, has no such privilege in Ireland; there he is hunted regularly on Christmas Day by the idle vagabonds of the district, and his poor little body is carried from house to house, his slayers exacting a subscription from the inhabitants, under the pretence of defraying the charges for his funeral.

A vast number of our winter birds migrate hither from foreign countries; they come in flocks, sometimes of prodigious extent, as most of our readers know; it is not, however, so generally known that the extent of these flocks, and the distance southward which they travel, is not a bad index of the prospective state of the weather; the rule being, that the farther south such strangers penetrate, the more severe is the winter likely to be. It is sometimes asked why birds which do not migrate, do yet flock, and that in vast numbers. The answer is not casy to give. It may be that they herd together from a sense of danger. We have noticed that the severer the weather, the more do our home birds flock. In a mild winter, the larks, for instance, assemble only in small numhers; but if the frost is of long duration, one sees them by tens of thousands in vast swarms. is the same tendency among the smaller birds: long-continued cold will drive a dozen different races to the formation of one common republic, and you shall see them all in a cluster, shouting and chaffering on the ridge of a fence, or in some trysting-tree, till darkness puts an end to the din.

There

Some of our smaller animals would in such a season as this be still more helpless than the little birds, but that Providence has met their case by the instinct of hybernation. Among these is the long-tailed field-mouse, who lays up a store of grain, acorns, and seeds for himself (intending to cat them if he should happen to wake), and then goes to sleep among his hoard. He is so silly, however, as not to make his bed very deep in the ground, in consequence of which he is sometimes routed up by some prowling pig, and gets devoured, together with his winter store-a tit-bit of meal and vegetables for piggy. The dormouse is wiser, and rolls himself up in a more secure retreat along

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