As I advanced
towards this noise, it began to grow lighter about me, and I caught
sight, through the trees, of sundry gables and enclosure walls, and
something like the tops of a rickyard. And sure enough, a rickyard
it proved to be, and a neat little farm-steading, with the beech-
woods growing almost to the door of it. Just before me, however, as
I came upon the path, the trees drew back and let in a wide flood of
daylight on to a circular lawn. It was here that the noises had
their origin. More than a score of peacocks (there are altogether
thirty at the farm), a proper contingent of peahens, and a great
multitude that I could not number of more ordinary barn-door fowls,
were all feeding together on this little open lawn among the beeches.
They fed in a dense crowd, which swayed to and fro, and came hither
and thither as by a sort of tide, and of which the surface was
agitated like the surface of a sea as each bird guzzled his head
along the ground after the scattered corn. The clucking, cooing
noise that had led me thither was formed by the blending together of
countless expressions of individual contentment into one collective
expression of contentment, or general grace during meat.
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