THE SHEPHERD OF THE DOWNS 113 



wallflower, periwinkle, marigold, and others — run 

 wild. 



The tenant was a giant of a man with the hugest 

 hands and immense long hairy arms like a gorilla, and 

 a head that looked as if it had been roughly hewn out 

 of some great black rock. Big and rough and dark, 

 he looked almost dangerous, and I wondered how he 

 had won that very gentle pretty woman to be his wife. 

 But " something had come into his heart," perhaps, to 

 alter its nature and make him in disposition like her- 

 self. He was like a good preternaturally grave child, 

 and being inarticulate he seldom opened his mouth. 

 I remember one hot afternoon when we were at tea 

 his sudden appearance in the doorway, and how lean- 

 ing on the door-frame looking in and down upon us, 

 tired and black and dusty, his shirt-sleeves rolled up 

 displaying his huge hairy arms, he seemed like some 

 strange half-human monster who had just come up out 

 of the interior of the earth, where he had been occu- 

 pied blowing the bellows for Vulcan, or on some such 

 huge grimy task. His wife cast a glance at him, and 

 after a little while, and with just the faint suspicion of 

 a smile playing about her mouth, she remarked, " Look 

 at Old Blackie ! " It was plain to any one who could 

 read the feeling in the expression and the voice that 

 she loved her rough giant. 



She was helped in the house-work by a sister, a 

 nice-looking girl of nineteen, and there were two little 

 children, perfect little Saxons with round rosy faces, 



H 



