A BARN 77 



in a gateway, doing nothing, like their pastor ; if they 

 were on the loneliest slope of the Downs he and they 

 could not be more unconcerned. Carriages go past, and 

 neither the sheep nor the shepherd turn to look. 



Suddenly there comes a hollow booming sound a 

 roar, mellowed and subdued by distance, with a peculiar 

 beat upon the ear, as if a wave struck the nerve and re- 

 bounded and struck again in an innnitestimal fraction 

 of time such a sound as can only bellow from the 

 mouth of cannon. Another and another. The big guns 

 at Woolwich are at work. The shepherd takes no heed 

 neither he nor his sheep. 



His ears must acknowledge the sound, but his mind 

 pays no attention. He knows of nothing but his sheep. 

 You may brush by him along the footpath and it is 

 doubtful if he sees you. But stay and speak about the 

 sheep, and instantly he looks you in the face and answers 

 with interest. 



Round the corner of the straw-rick by the red-roofed 

 barn there comes another man, this time with smoke- 

 blackened face, and bringing with him an odour of 

 cotton waste and oil. He is the driver of a steam plough- 

 ing engine, whose broad wheels in summer leave their 

 impression in the deep white dust of the roads, and in 

 moist weather sink into the soil at the gateways and leave 

 their mark as perfect as in wax. But though familiar 

 with valves, and tubes, and gauges, spending his hours 

 polishing brass and steel, and sometimes busy with 

 spanner and hammer, his talk, too, is of the fields. 



He looks at the clouds, and hopes it will continue fine 

 enough to work. Like many others of the men who are 

 employed on the farms about town he came originally 

 from a little village a hundred miles away, in the heart of 

 the country. The stamp of the land is on him, too. 



