This man, being a member of the great Cripps race--whether worthy, or not, of that staunch lineal excellence--had an hereditary perception of the right way to examine a rut. It would have been easy enough, perhaps, in a lane of little traffic, to judge whether anything lately had passed, with the weather and ground as usual. But to-day--the day after what has been told of--both weather and ground had just taken a turn, as abrupt as if both were feminine. The smile of soft spring was changed into a frown, and the glad young buoyancy of the earth into a stiff sort of feeling, not frozen or crisp, but as happens to a man when a shiver of ague vibrates through a genial perspiration. To put it more clearly, the wind had chopped round to the east, and was blowing keenly--a masterful, strongly pronounced, and busily energetic east wind, as superior to hypocrisy as it was to all claims of mercy. At the sound and the feel of its vehement sweep, surprise and alarm ran through the wood; and the nestling-places of the sun ruffled up like a hen that calls her chicks to her. The foremost of the buds of the tall trees shook; not as they shake to a west wind, but with a sense of standing naked; the twigs that carried them flattened upwards, having lost all pleasure; the branches, instead of bowing kindly (as they do to any other wind), also went upward, with a stiff cold back, and a hatred at being treated so. Many and many a little leaf, still snug in its own overcoat, shrunk back, and preferred to defer all the joys of the sky, if this were a sample of them. And many and many a big leaf (thrust, without any voice of its own, on the world) had no chance of sighing yet, but whistled on the wind, and felt it piping through its fluted heart; and knowing what a liver-coloured selvage must come round its green, bewailed the hour that coaxed it forth from the notched, and tattered, and cast-off frizzle, dancing by this time the wind knows where. Because the east wind does what no other wind of the welkin ever does. It does not come from the good sky downward, bringing higher breath to us; nor even on the level of the ancient things, spreading average movement. This alone of all winds strikes from the face of the good earth upward, sweeping the blush from the skin of the land, and wrinkling all who live thereon. That is the time when the very best man finds little to rejoice in; unless it be a fire of seasoned logs, or his own contrariety; the fur of all animals (being their temper) moves away and crawls on them; and even bland dogs and sweet horses feel each several hair at issue with their well-brushed conscience.