“Fifty year ago ’twere all mirth and jollity,” he replied to our enquiry as to the old times.  “There was four feasts in the year for us folk.  First of all there was the sower’s feast,—­that would be about the end of April; then came the sheep-shearer’s feast,—­there’d be about fifteen of us as would sit down after sheep-shearing, and we’d be singing best part of the night, and plenty to eat and drink; next came the feast for the reapers, when the corn was cut about August; and, last of all, the harvest home in September.  Ah! those were good times fifty years ago.  My father and I have rented this cottage eighty-six years come Michaelmas; and my father’s grandfather lived in that ’ere housen, up that ‘tuer’ there, nigh on a hundred years afore that.  I planted them ash trees in the grove, and I mind when those firs was put in, near seventy years ago.  Ah! there was some foxes about in those days; trout, too, in the ’bruk’—­it were full of them.  You’ll have very few ‘lets’ for hunting this season; ’twill be a mild time again.  Last night were Hollandtide eve, and where the wind is at Hollandtide there it will stick best part of the winter.  I’ve minded it every year, and never was wrong yet The wind is south-west to-day, and you’ll have no ‘lets’ for hunting this time.”

“Lets” appear to be hindrances to hunting in the shape of frosts.  It is an Anglo-Saxon word, seldom used nowadays, though it is found in the dictionary; and our English Prayer Book has the words “we are sore let and hindered in running the race,” etc.  Shakespeare too employs it to signify a “check” with the hounds.

As I left, and thanked John Brown for his information, he handed me a little bit of paper, whereon was written:  “to John Brown 1 day minding the edge at the picked cloos 2s three days doto,” etc.  I found that this was his little account for mending the hedge at the “picket close.”

A fine stamp of humanity is the Cotswold labourer; and may his shadow never grow less.

     “Princes and lords may flourish or may fade,
      A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
      But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride,
      When once destroyed can never be supplied.”

Fresh and health-giving is the breeze on the wolds in autumn, like the driest and oldest iced champagne.  In the rough grass fields tough, wiry bents, thistles with purple flowers, and the remnants of oxeye daisies on brittle stalks rise almost to the height of your knees.  Lovely blue bell-flowers grow in patches; golden ragwort, two sorts of field scabious, yellow toad-flax, and occasionally some white campion remain almost into winter.  Where the grass is shorter masses of shrivelled wild thyme may be seen.  The charlock brightens the landscape with its mass of colour among the turnips until the end of November, if the season be fairly mild.  But the hedges and trees are the glory of “the happy autumn fields.”  The traveller’s joy gleams