IN QUEST OF RARE SONGSTERS 153 



livcrcd his reply in the direction from which the voice 

 had come, thougli the speaker was no lonj^^er there, 

 having gone twenty or tliirty yards past the point. 



My second encounter with a bhnd man was during 

 the ramble in a green country. I alighted, and watched 

 him go on feeling his way along the edge of the road 

 with his stick. lie was a mile or more from the village 

 at a spot where the road went by a wood. A little 

 further on by the roadside the benevolent landlord — 

 would that there were more like him! — had placed a 

 garden bench in the shade for tired travellers to rest on. 

 The man was making his way to this seat and after he 

 had settled down I went back and sat by him. He was 

 a big healthy fine-looking man, a native of the village, 

 a son of a farm labourer. He, more ambitious, left 

 his home as a youth to find other employment, but it 

 was a dangerous trade he took up and as a result of an 

 explosion of powder in his face his vision was destroyed 

 for ever. He came back to his village which, he said, 

 he would never quit again. It was the one place known 

 to him and although it was now covered with darkness 

 he would still see it with his inner eye — the streets 

 and houses, the fields, roads, hedges, woods, and streams 

 — all this area which had been his playground in his early 

 years was so well remembered that he could still find 

 his way about in it. 



He told me he made his living by selling tea which 

 he procured in quantities direct from a London mer- 

 chant and retailed to the cottages in half- and quarter- 

 pound packets. They took their tea from him because 



