Country Life
By IAN MALL IN a spell of colder weather the morning sun breaks through a haze and lasts only until early afternoon, when it fades to an orange glow and dissolves in mist. A line of starlings goes over, but there is little movement in the natural life of the countryside. One stops and looks about at a scene one has looked upon so often in other years, something familiar as though part of an old engraving shOWing thorns on the skyline, dead trees like candles on a slope that was once a wood, smoke rising from a cottage hidden in a hollow. The land is dry, for it hasn't rained for a week. At dusk, walking the lane, one hears excited voices in an adjoining field and sees through the hedge the flicker of a lighted match. All at once the gorse is crack- ling and three small figures run for their lives, dramatically silhouetted in a glow that rises to make the settling of night somehow more com- plete as sparks float on the hot air and smoke rolls away across the shadowed pasture. The firebell rings half an hour after this, when flames tower as high as a near-by ash tree. Indoors the domestic fire burns with a bright- ness that is supposed to indicate frost and, fittingly, there are muffins for tea.
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