Besides which, any assailants must pass the stockades first." "Quite true.

Still I don't like it; it is a loose way of doing things." Outside the gate they followed the waggon track, or South Road, for about half a mile.

It crossed meadows parted by low hedges, and they remarked, as they went, on the shortness of the grass, which, for want of rain, was not nearly fit for mowing.

Last year there had been a bad wheat crop; this year there was at present scarcely any grass.

These matters were of the highest importance; peace or war, famine or plenty, might depend upon the weather of the next few months.
The meadows, besides being divided by the hedges, kept purposely cropped low, were surrounded, like all the cultivated lands, by high and strong stockades.