252 HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



in their movements, as if they had lost all joy and 

 interest in life. 



The sight of him taught me something I could not 

 get from the books. The intensity of life in his eyes 

 and whole expression ; the rough-hewn face and rude, 

 powerful form rude but well balanced the vigour in 

 his every movement, enabled me to realise better than 

 anything that history tells us what those men who came 

 as strangers to these shores in the fifth century were 

 really like, and how they could do what they did. They 

 came, a few at a time, in open row-boats, with nothing 

 but their rude weapons in their hands, and by pure 

 muscular force, and because they were absolutely with- 

 out fear and without compassion, and were mentally 

 but little above a herd of buffaloes, they succeeded in 

 conquering a great and populous country with centuries 

 of civilisation behind it. 



Talking with him, I was not surprised to find him a 

 discontented man. He did not want to live in a town 

 he seemed not to know just what he wanted, or having 

 but few words he did not know how to say it ; but his 

 mind was in a state of turmoil and revolt, and he could 

 only curse the head shepherd, the bailiff, the farmer, and, 

 to finish up, the lord of the manor. Probably he soon 

 cast away his crook, and went off in search of some distant 

 place, where he would be permitted to discharge the 

 energy that seethed and bubbled in him perhaps to 

 bite the dust on the African veldt. 



This, then, is one of the main facts to be noted in the 



