"WILD MUSK" 319 



But how long after White's time did that flower run 

 wild in Hampshire ? I asked, and then thought that I 

 might get the answer from some old person who had 

 spent a long life at that spot. 



I went no farther than the nearest cottage to find 

 the very one I wanted, an ancient dame of seventy- 

 four, who had never lived anywhere but in that small 

 thatched cottage at the side of the old churchyard. 

 She was an excessively thin old dame, and had the 

 appearance of a walking skeleton in a worn old cotton 

 gown ; and her head was like a skull with a thin grey 

 skin drawn tightly over the sharp bones of the face, 

 with pale-coloured living eyes in the sockets. Her 

 scanty grey hair was gathered in a net worn tightly 

 on her head like a skull-cap. The old women in 

 the villages here still keep to this long - vanished 

 fashion. 



I asked this old woman to tell me about the yellow 

 flowers by the water, and she said that they had always 

 been there. I told her she must be mistaken; and 

 after considering for awhile she assured me that they 

 grew there in abundance when she was quite young. 

 She distinctly remembered that before her marriage 

 and that was over fifty years ago she often went 

 down to the stream to gather flowers, and would come 

 in with great handfuls of wild musk. 



When she had told me this, even before she had 

 finished speaking, I seemed to see two persons before 

 me the lean old woman with her thin colourless 



