IN A HAMPSHIRE VILLAGE 161 



Here I came to a village which happened to be one 

 of the very few, certainly not above half a dozen, in 

 all that county never previously visited by me ; and 

 as it was within easy distance of the spot I had come 

 to explore I had some idea of settling in it for a few 

 days. I had long known it by name, and it had further- 

 more been minutely and lovingly described to me by 

 an old soldier, decorated with many medals, who is 

 now a keeper in one of the Royal parks. One day last 

 spring he showed me a blackbird's nest in which he took 

 a somewhat anxious interest on account of its unsafe 

 position on a wart or projection on the trunk of a 

 Spanish chestnut tree, a few feet from the ground and 

 plainly visible to mischievous eyes. Our talk about 

 this careless blackbird and other birds led to his telling 

 me of his boyhood in a small out-of-the-world Hamp- 

 shire village, and I asked him how, with such a feeling 

 as he had revealed about his native place, he had been 

 able to spend his life away from it, and why he did not 

 go back there now ? That, he answered, was his de- 

 sire and intention, not only since he had begun to grow 

 old, but he had cherished the idea even when he was 

 a young man and in his prime, in India, Burma, Af- 

 ghanistan, Egypt. Now at last the time seemed near 

 when his desire would be fulfilled ; two years more in 

 the park and he would retire with a small pension, 

 which, added to his soldier's pension, would enable 

 him to pass the remnant of his life in his native village. 



I thought of him now, the tall straight old soldier, 

 with his fine stern face and grey moustache and hair, 

 II 



