A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 55 



decaying on the sticks. Under instructions, Bish 

 works admirably ; but he has no power of initiative. 

 The cottage is a poor timber and plaster affair, the 

 old thatch coming down to the middle of the case- 

 ments, and shrunk away from the one black chimney- 

 stack. In the living room, with its close heat and 

 ancient smell, I find my man. Without his hat, Bish 

 is picturesque ; he has a high crown, bristled over 

 with thin hair, a narrow peaked face whose deep- 

 scored wrinkles converge to the chin and pointed 

 beard, melancholy eyes that speak a philosopher on 

 the defensive against the conspiring world. I think 

 his must be a surviving or recurrent type of physio- 

 gnomy ; he belongs to the Commonwealth, to a 

 certainty ; the Rector calls him The Regicide. He 

 would become jackboots and a buff coat perfectly, 

 and would not be amiss in a frock ; but no ancestral 

 instincts rule his clothes. Bag-kneed, frayed check 

 trousers, some treasured cast-off, without so much as 

 leggings to ease the anomaly, a black coat with pen- 

 dulous tails, and a battered straw hat, disguise the 

 Roundhead all too well. As I find him bare-headed 

 he looks the Ironside again, though a dyspeptic one. 

 As I come in, he puts down a thumbed copy of 

 Culpeper's Herbal, which was his father's, and which 

 he still reads with vague notions of profit, although 



