Three generations

TIME'S CHANGES 231
of snails, half hidden in their striped shells and in the
lush herbage, haunted the bed of veronica, and were
haunted in their turn by flocks of yellow-hammers,
which made the snails their prey. Out of sight at
some distance one could hear the birds tapping, tapping
the snails' shells against the stones which lay about,
in order to break the shells and reach the contents.
The sound was like what might have been produced
by a party of industrious masons at a still greater
distance.
It feels ages since I saw the yellow cowslip, which
made the June Links gay, putting to shame the fine
Queen Anne's needlework of the eyebright, wild thyme,
and crow's-foot, and even the Grange garden, which,
in spite of its exposure and its blighted spring blossom,
was in summer a mass of gilly-flower, tall Canterbury
bells, Lammas lilies, and roses, with all the hardy
annuals then cultivated. The garden is now a deso-
late wilderness, only a willow-tree, which my sister
Mary planted in a sheltered corner, and a few stunted
elder bushes, which light feet used to brush through
in bold leaps from the garden wall, remaining of the
former summer luxuriance. The old house perished
by fire, and a roofless ruin with the daylight gaping
through its unsashed windows is all that is left. The
landmark of the brae — the very brae — is gone, worn
down from its exaltation and ploughed out of existence.
The roads, once frequented by carts bound for the
" coal-hill," are erased, so that one monotonous green
level is all that is presented to the eye, because the
pits themselves were long ago forsaken and filled up ;
an industry is gone from the country-side.