194 IDLEHURST : 



his people of any pleasure derived purely from the 

 landscape ? He doubts ; but thinks there is more of 

 what we call "poetry" to be met with in the common 

 life than we generally imagine. Certain people see 

 it, he thinks, as some see humour. 



"I met Gascoyne of Ashcombe at the Deanery 

 Chapter on Tuesday," he says; "he is poetical, and the 

 poetry comes to him. He was telling me of a girl in 

 his parish, a servant at one of the farms, who was * in 

 trouble ' the man, a labourer on the next farm, had 

 gone away from the place. That very wild night this 

 Spring when it was raining in sheets and blowing a 

 bitter gale, she let herself out of the house, and walked 

 for hours all over the farm with the child in her arms. 

 She came back about daybreak ; the child was quite 

 dead and cold. She said afterwards that she had 

 heard him whistle, as he used to do as a signal when 

 he came to the farm ; and she had gone over every 

 lane and field where they used to walk together, 

 always hearing the whistle in front of her. There's 

 dramatic matter in that. Gascoyne had another 

 story from one of his old people ; but it doesn't prove 

 anything, because it goes back before the railways. 

 A farmer's son, Mark Pierce, at one of the Down 

 farms behind Firle Beacon, was courting a girl, Mary 

 Cheesman, who lived at another farm a couple of 



