180 NATURE IN DOWNLAND 



lighter and cooler than any other; but no person 

 with any consideration for the feelings of a bird in 

 the matter would think of wearing it, any more 

 than he would think of sporting white or light- 

 coloured flannels. White and black are equally bad 

 for those who go a-birding. There is nothing like 

 tweeds of a greyish-brown indeterminate colour, with 

 a tweed hat to match. 



A second amusing adventure, which I had at a 

 farm in a deep hollow in the midmost part of the 

 South Down range, where it is broadest, remains to 

 be told. The small grey old house, shaded by old 

 trees, so far removed from the noise of the world 

 in that deep valley among the great hills, had en- 

 chanted me when I first beheld it, and hearing later 

 that the people of the house sometimes took lodgers 

 in summer, I went to inquire. I left the village 

 north of the downs where I was staying a little after 

 seven o'clock in the morning, and after being out 

 on the hills for over six hours in a great heat, visiting 

 many furzy places in my ramble, I went down to 

 that shady peaceful spot where I hoped to find a 

 home. Some old trees grew on the lawn, and on 

 a chair in the shade sat a grey-haired man in broad- 

 cloth clothes, his feet in red carpet slippers, looking 

 very pale and ill. He was, I supposed, a visitor 

 or guest, and a town man ; probably a prosperous 

 tradesman out of health, too old to make any change 

 in the solemn black respectable dress he had always 



