134 WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 



tawny colour with age and frequent polishing may 

 be found a few pieces of old china, and on the table at 

 teatime, perhaps, other pieces, which a connoisseur 

 would tremble to see in use, lest a clumsy arm should 

 shatter their fragile antiquity. Though apparently 

 so little valued, you shall not be able to buy these 

 things for money not so much because their artistic 

 beauty is appreciated, but because of the instinctive 

 clinging to everything old, characteristic of the place 

 and people. These have been there of old time ; they 

 shall remain still. Somewhere in the cupboards, too, 

 is a curiously carved piece of iron, to fit into the hand, 

 with a front of steel before the fingers, like a skeleton 

 rapier guard : it is the ancient steel with which, and 

 a flint, the tinder and the sulphur match were ignited. 

 Up in the lumber-room are carved oaken bedsteads 

 af unknown age ; linen-presses of black oak with carved 

 panels, and a drawer at the side for the lavender-bags ; 

 a rusty rapier, the point broken off ; a flintlock pistol, 

 the barrel of portentous length, and the butt weighted 

 with a mace-like knob of metal, wherewith to knock 

 the enemy on the head. An old yeomanry sabre lies 

 about somewhere, which the good man of the time 

 wore when he rode in the troop against the rioters in 

 the days of machine-burning which was like a civil 

 war in the country, and is yet recollected and talked 

 of. The present farmer, who is getting just a trifle 

 heavy in the saddle himself, can tell you the names 

 of labourers living in the village whose forefathers rose 

 in that insurrection. It is a memory of the house 



