212 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



one who rebuilt the house when the woods were darker 

 and huger still. Life is a dark simple matter for him; 

 three-quarters of his living is done for him by the dead; 

 merely to look at him is to see a man five generations 

 thick, so to speak, and neither Nature nor the trumpery 

 modern man can easily disturb a human character of that 

 density. As I watch him going to and fro I lose sight 

 of everything away from his rude house and the tall 

 woods, because they and he are so powerful — he has the 

 trees as well as his ancestors at his back — and it is no 

 flight of fancy to see him actually cut off from all the 

 world except the house and woods, and yet holding his 

 own, able to keep his fire burning, his larder full, his 

 back covered and his house dry. I feel but a wraith as I 

 pass by. I wonder what there is worth knowing that he 

 does not know, with his bright eyes, bright long teeth, 

 stiff limbs capable of unceasing toil, and that look of 

 harmony with day and night. I see him looking on as 

 the wounded trooper — two hundred and fifty years, a 

 trifle, ago — drains the water just lifted frorri the well; 

 look at his gallant face, his delicate ardour as of another 

 race, bright dress, restless blue eyes, his helplessness after 

 the defeat in a cavalry fight about nothing at all. The 

 cornet rides away and the woodland fellow puts all his 

 nature into the felling of a beech as into an object worthy 

 of cold steel, and as he plies his axe he smiles at the thought 

 of that brave, that silly face and sleek hair. He smiles 

 to-day as he sees a youth go by with proud looks of 

 command, incapable, as he well understands, of command- 

 ing anything except perhaps a wife or a groom or a 

 regiment of townsmen — yet his landlord. 



Rough grass and scattered thorns and lofty groups of 



