What fantasies are called up on a night like this, leaning up against the barred gate, alone! Away in front, the dark, level grass land--beyond, the forest. A sky bright with stars gleaming and winking, high up, unattainable. There is Sirius, the largest star, flaming with sudden molten crimson, then flashing a blue spearhead of light. Possibly there is a mist around that sun, so many millions of miles away, that breaks up the light as the prism of glass does the colours of the spectrum. Over the thick blackness in front a figure is moving-or am I imagining things? Just a faint feeling of fear, the nerves strung up, caused perhaps by slumbering instinct. Thousands of years ago a figure coming stealthily nearer in the darkness might mean an enemy. I glance over my shoulder; there is a feeling that some one might leap on to my back. But as he draws nearer I can hear his footfalls in the frosty grass and his laboured breath--it is one of the farm hands going home from the inn. He climbs over the gate, starts violently as he sees me standing here, and bids me good-night. I answer, adding that I have been listening to the owls. He politely tells me that there are a “good few on ’em about,” but to himself says that I am mazed. Then he passes on, his steps get fainter and fainter, and I am alone. _Yak wrik! Yak-yak-wrik!_ low over my head. A blood-curdling noise if ever there was one. The latter part of the screech, the _wrik_, is considerably higher in tone than the former part. The barn owl passed over the gate, just above my head and only when he startled me with his cry--not long and sobbing as the wood owl, but sharp and high-pitched--did I know that he had gone. A white mistiness in the night, wings beating slower than those of his hooting brother, and the white or barn owl had drifted over the grass, hunting the mice and field vole.