88 NATURE NEAR LONDON. 



Downs he and they could not be more unconcerned. 

 Carriages go past, and neither the sheep nor the 

 shepherd turn to look. 



Suddenly there comes a hollow booming sound a 

 roar, mellowed and subdued by distance, with a 

 peculiar beat upon the ear, as if a wave struck the 

 nerve and rebounded and struck again in an infini- 

 tesimal fraction of time such a sound as can only 

 bellow from the mouth of cannon. Another and 

 another. The big guns at Woolwich are at work. 

 The shepherd takes no heed neither he nor his 

 sheep. 



His ears must acknowledge the sound, but his mind 

 pays no attention. He knows of nothing but his 

 sheep. You may brush by him along the footpath 

 and it is doubtful if he sees you. But stay and speak 

 about the sheep, and instantly he looks you in the 

 face and answers with interest. 



Round the corner of the straw-rick by the red- 

 roofed barn there comes another man, this time with 

 smoke-blackened face, and bringing with him an 

 odour of cotton waste and oil. He is the driver of 

 a steam ploughing engine, whose broad wheels in 

 summer leave their impression in the deep white dust 

 of the roads, and in moist weather sink into the soil 

 at the gateways and leave their mark as perfect as in 

 wax. But though familiar with valves, and tubes, 

 and gauges, spending his hours polishing brass and 

 steel, and sometimes busy with spanner and hammer, 

 his talk, too, is of the fields. 



He looks at the clouds, and hopes it will continue 

 fine enough to work. Like many others of the men 



