An Old Outhouse Once the outhouse was used for. storing
implements, but now it is going slowly to ruin. Slates have fallen off here and there, and the floor has become sodden. In spite of the ravages of the years, it still gives shelter from the sun and rain, and cattle often stand in its gloomy entry. The life that has taken possession of the place is insect life, beetles and flies, stone lice and spiders. To live on the beetles come a few field mice; to live on the mice, an owl. Swallows sweep across the forecourt, gathering the flies that tumble in clouds in the evening, and among the tall nettles a shrew gives warning of danger behind a boulder or among the rotted stalks of ancient straw that might shelter a snake or a toad. I watched a tramp going slowly up the track past this place. He inspected the tumbled ruin, and went on. There was nothing friendly, no health, in the place, nothing but decay and the odour of the crippled elder growing through a fall of gable stones.
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