CHAPTER XVIII 



BACK TO THE WEST COUNTRY 



A procession of white cows — Revisiting old friends — Montacute 

 House— Ham Hill stone — A nightingale and a commercial 

 traveller — A north-countryman at Salisbury — Poetic feeling 

 of northerners — The commercial traveller's disappointment 

 — Between Yeovil and Glastonbury — The people of Somerset. 



MY object gained, I quitted the little Hamp- 

 shire village the richer for three prized 

 memories: first and best was that of the 

 people I had been staying with in their cottage; next 

 in order of merit, the image of those little feathered 

 fairies in a vocal rage; and last, that of five white 

 or cream-coloured cows issuing from some small or 

 cottage farm at the side of the heath, driven or 

 followed by a young woman to their daily grazing- 

 place on some distant part of the moor. Every morn- 

 ing they appeared from among the green foliage of 

 trees and shrubs, behind which the homestead was 

 hidden, to take their slow way over the wide brown 

 heath in a scattered procession, always followed by 

 that young woman, tall and straight, her head un- 

 covered, her limp gown of a whity-grey colour almost 

 like the white of the cows. A beautiful strange spec- 

 tacle, seen from afar as they moved across the moor 

 in the dewy shimmering light of the early sun. They 

 had a misty appearance, and there was something, 



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