A thick mist clings in the hollow there by the osier-bed where the pack have overtaken the fox, so that you cannot see the dogs. Beyond, the contour of the hill is lost in the cloud trailing over it; the foreground towards us shows a sloping ploughed field, a damp brown, with a thin mist creeping along the cold furrows. Yonder, three vague and shadowy figures are pushing laboriously forward beside the leafless hedge; while the dirt-spattered bays hardly show against its black background and through the mist. Some way behind, a weary grey,--the only spot of colour, and that dimmed--is gamely struggling--it is not leaping--through a gap beside a gaunt oak tree, whose dark buff leaves yet linger. But out of these surely an artist who dared to face Nature as she is might work a picture. The year really commences at Wick farmhouse immediately before the autumn nominally begins--nominally, because there is generally a sense of autumn in the atmosphere before the end of September. Just about that time there comes a slackening of the work requiring earnest personal supervision. When the yellow corn has been cut and carted, and the threshing machine has prepared a sample for the markets--when the ricks are thatched, and the steam plough is tearing up the stubble--then the farmer can spare a day or so free from the anxieties of harvest. There is plenty of work to be done; in fact the yearly rotation of labour may be said to begin in the autumn too, but it does not demand such hourly attention. It is the season for picnics--while the sun is yet warm and the sward dry--on the downs among the great hazel copses, or the old entrenchment with its view over a vast landscape, dimmed, though, by yellow haze, or by the shallow lake in the vale. With the exception of knocking over a young rabbit now and then for household use, the farmer, even if he is independent of a landlord, as in this case, does not shoot till late in the year. Old-fashioned folk, though not in the least constrained to do so, still leave the first pick of the shooting to some neighbouring landowner between whose family and their own friendly relations have existed for generations. It is true that the practice becomes rarer yearly as the old style of men die out and the spirit of commerce is imported into rural life: the rising race preferring to make money of their shooting, by letting it, instead of cultivating social ties. At Wick, however, they keep up the ancient custom, and the neighbouring squire takes the pick of the wing-game. They lose nothing for their larder through this arrangement--receiving presents of partridges and pheasants far exceeding in number what could possibly be killed upon the farm itself; while later in the year the boundaries are relaxed on the other side, and the farmer kills his rabbit pretty much where he likes, in moderation.