ABSTRACT
In a day or two the cricket field at Shastbury will be empty and the boys gone home for holidays. I used to watch them go, happy as only boys can be when they have weeks and weeks of fun and freedom before them. But I did not like the end of the summer term at Shastbury: it meant that for me cricket on green grass was over and done with for the year; it meant that I had to go back to a noisy, dusty city. Sometimes I would stay on at Shastbury a day or two, and at evening-time I would walk over the playing-fields in the sunset. I shall never forget the peacefulness of those solitary hours, with the little chapel huddled in the trees. The crows came home one by one, flapping their way overhead. It was good to sit under the great oak and watch the light leave the sky and hear the hum of the town in the distance.
