REVERSION OF TYPE 251 



He could, I imagined, have made a breach in the stone 

 wall near which I found him with his flock, if he had 

 lowered that hard round head and charged it like a 

 rhinoceros. His hair was light brown, and his face a 

 uniform rosy brown in all Hampshire no man nor 

 woman had I seen so beautiful in colour, and his round, 

 keen, piercing eyes were of a wonderful blue "eyes 

 like the sea." If this poor fellow, washed clean and 

 clothed becomingly in white flannels, had shown himself 

 in some great gathering at the Oval or some such place 

 on some great day, the common people would have 

 parted on either side to make way for him, and would 

 have regarded him with a kind of worship an impulse 

 to kneel before him. There, on the downs, his appear- 

 ance was almost grotesque in the dress he wore, made 

 of some fabric intended to last for ever, but now frayed, 

 worn to threads in places, and generally earth-coloured. 

 A small old cap, earth-coloured too, covered a portion 

 of his big, round head, and his ancient, lumpish, cracked 

 and clouted boots were like the hoofs of some extinct 

 large sort of horse which he had found fossilised among 

 the chalk hills. He had but eleven shillings a week, 

 and could not afford to spend much on dress. How he 

 could get enough to eat was a puzzle ; he looked as if 

 he could devour half of one of his muttons at a meal, 

 washed down with a bucket of beer, without hurt to his 

 digestion. In appearance he formed a startling contrast 

 to the people around him : they were in comparison a 

 worn-out, weary-looking race, dim-eyed, pale-faced, slow 



