Round about a Great Estate Author:Richard Jefferies Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III A PACK OF STOATS. BIRDS The sweet scent from a beanfield beside the road caused me to linger one summer morning in a gateway under the elms. A ... more »gentle south wind came over the beans, bearing with it the odour of their black-and-white bloom. The Overboro' road ran through part of the Oke- bourne property (which was far too extensive to be enclosed in a ring fence), and the timber had therefore been allowed to grow so that there was an irregular avenue of trees for some distance. I faced the beanfield, which was on the opposite side, leaning back against the gate which led into some of Hilary's wheat. The silence of the highway, the soft wind, the alternate sunshine and shade as the light cloudspassed over, induced a dreamy feeling ; and I cannot say how long I had been there when something seemed as it were to cross the corners of my half-closed eyes. Looking up I saw three stoats gallop across the road, not more than ten yards away. They issued from under the footpath, which was raised and had a drain through it to relieve the road of flood-water in storm. The drain was faced with a flat stone, with a small round hole cut in it. Coming from the wheat at my back, the stoats went down into the ditch; thence entered the short tunnel under the footpath, and out at its stone portal, over the road to the broad sward on the opposite side ; then along a furrow in the turf to the other hedge, and so into the beanfield. They galloped like racehorses straining for the victory ; the first leading, the second but a neck behind, and the third not half a length. The smooth road rising slightly in the centre showed them well; and thus, with the neck stretched out in front, and the tail extended in the rear, the stoatappears much longer than on a mound or in the grass. A sec...« less