From Fox's Earth 



creepie. Yea, to the outcasts, who owe to 

 nature their board, and by sheer weight of body 

 make a depression in the elastic bush, and sleep 

 on a scented pallet under the nodding broom 

 flowers. 



A lad was sitting on the grass ; he lives much 

 alone. The wont of the family is to scatter and 

 know where to meet, and the children fall in 

 with the arrangement. It is a pathetic life, with 

 the breeze and the shower, the broom and the 

 lane. But it is not all sadness nor loss. He was 

 happy, if homeless. He mimicked the songs of the 

 birds. It is the language he knows best, perhaps 

 loves most. A Scots tramp talks the native 

 doric, and whistles the local birds' songs. 



It was a land of lanes ; the fields were meshed 

 in them. A mile on was another. It blazed. 

 Nothing flowers so passionately as broom. The 

 glow and the passion are on the spirit that looks. 

 In the lane was a niche set in a bank and over- 

 shadowed by trees. They who chose it were 

 masters of out-of-door life, an art by itself, like 

 woodcraft. Known only to nomads by profession, 

 through lifelong practice it becomes a second 

 nature, and in the course of long transmission an 

 instinct. In the niche were two long, low, dark, 

 cylindrical creepies, an abode common to all the 

 nomads, and doubtless moulded out of their ex- 

 perience as best suited to the conditions. 



Beside each creepie sat two nomads, a man and 

 136 



