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thistles were shoulder-high, rabbits scurried 

 away at almost every step I took, while pheas- 

 ants and partridges filled the air with the whir 

 of wings. The first cottage I stumbled across 

 was literally falling down. The thatch had long 

 since disappeared, leaving the rafters and beams 

 as bare as bones to the open sky. As I entered 

 the village I came to a row of four cottages 

 under one roof. Only one of these was occu- 

 pied ; the other three, with their doors and 

 windows battered in, had been left as desolations 

 in which rats might play havoc, and through 

 which the moaning wind might fitfully wander. 

 From the occupied cottage issued a slatternly 

 young wife with a sporting dog at her heels. It 

 was probably the gamekeeper's. The villagers 

 told me that when a cottage became unoccupied 

 no attempt was ever made by the owner to keep 

 it in repair. Where pheasants are wanted the 

 peasant is not. 



On one side of the valley which runs from 

 Inkpen Beacon to Hurstbourne Tarrant, where 

 fields given over to the thistle, the wild carrot, 

 and the burdock form a vast rabbit warren, I 

 could detect that the plough had at one time 

 been at work. 



Though this was the high road from Hunger- 

 ford to Andover, innumerable rabbits crossed and 

 recrossed it in the broad daylight, and the 

 feeling of isolation grew upon me until I began 

 to wonder if I were really in over-populated 



