and great encouragers of good husbandry. When not singing and dancing, their chief nightly amusement is in riding the colts, and plaiting their manes, or tangling them with the seed-vessels of the burdock. Of a particular field in this neighbourhood it is reported that the farmer never puts his horses in it but he finds them in the morning in a state of great terror, panting, and covered with foam. Their form of government is monarchical, as frequent mention is made of the 'king of the piskies.' We have a few stories of pisky changelings, the only proof of whose parentage was that 'they didn't goody' [thrive]. It would seem that fairy children of some growth are occasionally entrusted to human care for a time, and recalled; and that mortals are now and then kidnapped, and carried off to fairyland; such, according to the nursery rhyme, was the end of Margery Daw:

"A disposition to laughter is a striking trait in their character. I have been able to gather little about the personalities of these creatures. My old friend before mentioned used to describe them as about the height of a span, clad in green, and having straw hats or little red caps on their heads. Two only are known by name, and I have heard them addressed in the following rhyme:—

"But times have greatly changed. The old-world stories in which our forefathers implicitly believed will not stand the light of modern education. The pixies have been banished from the West, and since their departure the wayward farmer can no longer plead being 'pisky-led' on market nights.

"'Pisky-led!' exclaimed an old Devon lady to her bibulous husband, who had returned home very late, pleading he had been led astray by the piskies. 'Now, dawntee say nort more about it'—and with a solemn voice and a shake of her bony finger she added: 'Pisky-led is whisky-led. That's how it is with you!'"

*         *         *         *         *         *

May with its wealth of resurrecting life, its birds' songs, its flowers uplifting glad heads, is a beautiful month in Dorset; but cider-making time, when the trees put on a blaze of yellow and red and the spirit of serenity and peace broods over everything, is the period that the true son of Dorset loves best. Cider-makin' time—what a phrase! What memories! Why, then, time does indeed blot and blur the golden days of youth! I had almost forgotten the sweet smell of pomace and the cider mill—things which loomed large in the days when I was a boy down Devon way. It is middle age, which Stevenson likened to the "bear's hug of custom squeezing the life out of a man's soul," that has robbed me of the power to conjure up those happy days from the depths of my consciousness. Certainly some virtue within me has departed—what? Well, I do not know, but I cannot recapture the delirious joy of the apple harvest in the West. It is only a memory. Perhaps it is one of those things which will return unexpectedly, and by which I shall remember the world at the last.

Well, then, when I was a boy, cider brewing in Hovey's barn was one of the joys of life. A steam-engine on four wheels arrived from Exeter, and pulleys and beltings were fixed up to work the old-fashioned press. Within the barn a rumbling machine crushed the apples (which had been growing mellow in the loft for a fortnight), and the press noisily descended on the racks of pulp and sent the liquid into the tubs with a swish like the fall of tropical rain. Outside the still October air was broken only by the chug—chug—chug of the stationary engine and the mellow voices and laughter of the farmers who delivered their apples and received in exchange barrels of cider. The marc from the cider-press was sometimes fed to cattle combined with bran, hay and chaff. But I suppose that was an old-fashioned idea, and farmers to-day would ridicule such a thing. But Farmer Hovey was a keen-eyed man of business—a man who could farm his acres successfully in the face of any disaster. How I wish that, now grown up, I could re-open those records, the book of his memory! But it has long been closed, laid away in the tree-shaded churchyard in Fore Street, near a flat stone commemorating John Starre:

JOHN STARRE.

Starre on Hie
Where should a Starre be
But on Hie?
Tho underneath
He now doth lie
Sleeping in Dust
Yet shall he rise
More glorious than
The Starres in skies.
1633.

Making "marc bricks" at Farmer Hovey's was the highest pinnacle of my desire. It was one of those peculiarly "plashy" jobs in which any child would delight. One could get thoroughly coated from head to foot with the apple pulp in about half-an-hour. The "marc" was made into bricks (about a pound in weight) to preserve it. It was first pressed as dry as possible, made into cubes with wooden moulds, and stacked in an airy place to dry. Hovey liked these bricks for fuel in the winter months, and I remember they made a wonderfully clear fire. It was while making up the apple pulp into bricks that my brothers and their friends caught the idea of the game of "hunting." The apple pulp was first made up into a score of heavy, wet balls. Having drawn lots as to who should be the hunter, the winner would take charge of the ammunition and retire to the barn, which was known as the "hunters' shack," while the other boys would shin up the orchard trees, or conceal themselves behind walls, ricks and bushes. A short start was allowed, and then the hunter sallied forth with unrestricted powers to bombard with shot and shell anyone within sight. The first one who made his way home to the "shack" became the next hunter. Many a satisfying flap on the back of the neck have I "got home" with those balls of apple pulp. It was a very primitive game, sometimes a very painful one, and not infrequently it ended in a general hand-to-hand fight. The game was certainly an excellent exercise in the art of encountering the hard knocks of life with a sunny fortitude. In 1916 it was my fortune to suffer rather a sharp period of shell-fire in Palestine with one of the players of this game. My old playmate turned to me and yelled: "Hi, there, Bob! Look out! These coming over are not made of apple pulp!"

Then the smell of the cider-press came full and strong on the night air of the desert, and England and the West Country came back to me in the foolishness of dreams, as the Garden of Hesperides or any other Valley of Bliss my erring feet had trodden in heedless mood.

There is a story of a Dorset vicar who was explaining to his flock the meaning of miracles. He saw that his hearers were dull and inattentive, and did not seem to grasp what he was saying, so he pointed to an old rascal of a villager who always lived riotously yet never toiled, and said in a loud voice: "I will tell you what a miracle is. Look at old Jan Domeny, he hasn't an apple-tree in his garden, and yet he made a barrelful of cider this October. There's a miracle for you."

While cycling out of Swanage to Corfe—a backbreaking and tortuous succession of hills—I had the misfortune to meet a wasp at full speed and receive a nasty sting. I asked a little girl if her mother lived