BRAMPTON-AMONG-THE-ROSE .

fields watching them race with one another as the
spring advanced and they got stronger, and sometimes
she would carry one that was not so good a runner to
a daisy-covered hillock, to give it a start in advance,
while she endeavoured to keep back the stronger one
by shouting or getting one of the shepherd boys to
hold it. Then she would clap her hands, and be quite
delighted when her little favourite won the race.
 Many of the old pastures were purple with wild
thyme in summer, when it was in flower, the perfume
of which filled all the air with fragrance, and furnished
honey for the swarms of bees that were ever murmuring
about the fields and Old Manor House garden; and this
wild thyme was said to give so fine a flavour to the
Brampton sheep, for no flocks fetched a higher price
in the market than those which fed on the Old Manor
House pastures, many of which had never been mown
within the memory of man, so that the turf was a foot
thick in some of the fields. In others, where corn was
grown, bullets and swords, and buckles, and spurs, and
horse-trappings, had been ploughed up from time to
time, telling of war that had manured those old battle-
fields, from which many a rich harvest has since been
reaped.
 Christabel did not like to hear that blood had been
shed in those peaceful pastures where her lambs
played, and the skylark built her ground-nest among
the daisies, for it was an unsolved mystery to her how
men could go out upon the green earth, with the blue
sky bending over their heads, to shoot and sabre each
other, when God saw all that they did. So the good
curate, finding that tales of the wars between the
Cavaliers and Roundheads made her very sad, used to
change the subject to the natural objects they met
with in their walks.