The place was so smiling and homelike under the westering sun that one looked to see a trim steading with the smoke of hearth fires ascending, and to hear the cheerful sounds of labour and of children's voices.

It was a secure hiding-place for such a fugitive as a Saxon king because he could not be pursued by an army; he himself with a few followers could move from steading to steading and enjoy a certain amount of state, but a pursuing army would have perished.

It was a secure hiding-place for such a fugitive as a Saxon king because he could not be pursued by an army; he himself with a few followers could move from steading to steading and enjoy a certain amount of state, but a pursuing army would have perished.

Wilfrid was busy converting the South Saxons, and Caedwalla, going from steading to steading with his followers, saved from any considerable pursuit by the nature of the country, became great friends with him.

Wilfrid was busy converting the South Saxons, and Caedwalla, going from steading to steading with his followers, saved from any considerable pursuit by the nature of the country, became great friends with him.

" The family of Harkness has been upwards of four hundred years tenants on the farm of Queensberry, occupying the farm-house and steading situated upon the banks of the Caple, and known by the name of Mitchelslacks.

For mitre and pall thou hast y-sold, False knight to Christ, for gain and gold; And for this thy forest were digged down all, Steading and hamlet and churches tall; And Christes poor were ousten forth, To beg their bread from south to north.

But when my father, after we had walked for about an hour, raised his stick, and, pointing to a neat farm-steading on the slope of a hill, and on the skirt of a dense mountain forest that rose high behind it, said, "There's the house, Davie," I thought I should have sunk on the ground.

So when this one came to the steading at West Inch I was not best pleased to see her.

When I got back he looked as though he had been born and bred in the steading.

Indeed, we were but two great boys beside him, for he had been everywhere and seen everything; and of an evening he would chatter away in his limping English until he took us clean from the plain kitchen and the little farm steading, to plunge us into courts and camps and battlefields and all the wonders of the world.

"Oh!" said he, and stood nodding his head and looking at me, though I knew very well that he could neither see me, nor the steading, nor anything else.

It was all like a dream, until I tramped off to the coach that evening, and looked back at the grey farm steading and at the two little dark figures: my mother with her face sunk in her Shetland shawl, and my father waving his drover's stick to hearten me upon my way.

"For large cattle," he said, "men of full age are required; for small cattle boys will do: but in either case those who drive their flocks and herds on the drift ways must be stouter than those who remain on the farm and return to the steading every day.

BOOK III THE HUSBANDRY OF THE STEADING Introduction: the antiquity of country life

The art of feeding live stock should really be divided into two branches, as is not yet fully appreciated, one relating to the stock kept at the steading, the other to the stock pastured in the fields.

"For there are two kinds of husbandry of live stock: one in the fields, as of cattle; and the other at the steading, as of chickens and pigeons and bees and other such things which are usually kept at a villa.

"My dear Merula," exclaimed Axius, "take me, I beg of you, as your pupil in the art of the husbandry of the steading.

Of the Roman development of the industries of the steading III.

"I include under the head of poultry houses the feeding of all kinds of fowls which are usually kept within the walls of a steading: under the head of warrens not merely what our great grandfathers meantplaces where rabbits were usually keptbut any enclosure adjoining a villa in which game animals are enclosed to be fed.

From such a start in the kind of husbandry we are now discussing, the next step was to provide masonry enclosures near the steading to confine game, and these served as well for shelter for the bee-stand, for originally the bees were wont to make their hives under the eaves of the farm house itself.

The earlier stage was that of our ancestors, who had but two places for keeping poultry: one the court yard of the steading in which chickens were fed and their profit derived from eggs and pullets, the other above ground, for their pigeons were kept in the dormers or on the roof of the farm house.

"It remains now," said Appius, "to rehearse the third and last act of our drama of the husbandry of the steading and to discuss the keeping of fishes.

Merula said: "I will leave the third act of our drama of the husbandry of the steading to you, Axius," and went out with the others, leaving Axius with me to wait for our candidate whom we knew would come to join us.

So there, my dear Pinnius, is the brief record of our discourse on the husbandry of the steading.