24 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 



from the " monument," near the top of the hill, all of 

 a sudden a man she had never seen before stood 

 before her — a sharp-featured man he was, in dark 

 clothes — and said, " I'll give you a sovereign for them 

 harbs." '"A sovereign?' says L 'Yes,' he says, 'a 

 sovereign,' and without another word he puts a piece 

 of money in my hand, takes the harbs, and was gone. 

 I stood there, tremblin' from head to foot, I did, I was 

 that frightened ; it were a sovereign right enough — 

 there was no mistake about that — but who the man 

 might be, and where he had got to — that's what 

 frightened me. I kept that sovereign, for years I 

 kept it; / didn't dare spend it'' "But, Liza," I 

 ventured to ask, "did you never see the man again ? " 

 '* Ever see 'im again ? Yes," she said, " I seed 'im 

 once again, years afterwards it was, but I know'd 'im ; 

 you couldn't mistake them sharp features, and them 

 clothes. I was comin' along the road, past Wickham 

 Wood, when there, not twenty yards ahead of me, he 

 stood ; but almost afore I seed 'im he was gone. No, 

 / didn't dare spend that sovereign.'' When Liza died 

 more than six hundred gold pieces were found in two 

 leather bags concealed in her mattress. She had done 

 well with her flowers and her ** harbs." But she was 

 the last of the simple-gatherers of Hampshire. It is 

 seldom now that you meet with a cottager who knows 

 even by sight the plants which once constituted the 

 village remedies. They still grow in their old locali- 

 ties, in the meadows and the hedgerows and the woods 

 — a few even linger in the cottage gardens; but no 

 one comes to gather them. It is not that the labourers 

 have ceased to believe in infallible remedies ; but now 

 they send on market days to the chemist's shop in the 

 town for the quack medicines advertised in the local 



