COUNTRY LIFE
A DOG barked in the field beside the road, and, although it wag still daylight, the afternoon bus went uphill with its lights on, disturbing three pigeons that were perched on the top of an oak-tree. The pigeons came beating down across the hollow, and turned in a wide sweep to reach the little wood. I watched them flutter into the trees and sit there alertly for a few minutes. They were listening and getting the feel of the wood before going to roost. A blackbird had been scolding something up among the hazels, and a thrumming of starlings sped past. A cold night was closing in, and a little wind whispered in the tops of the firs. The pigeons clattered from,one tree to another, and then, when the sky was grey, I could no longer see their silhouettes. They were close to the heart of the trees in which they would shelter until morning, sitting there with their eyes closed and their feathers fluffed, making them twice as plump in appearance. They had fed well on the debris of a corn-stack that had been threshed and a scattering of acorns still to be found under the oaks. As I went down the field away from the wood, I glimpsed a fox as he turned into the hedge as silent in his movements as a ghost.
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