"THE OLD MEN" 163 



All is unchanged ; and here, at high noon, I see their 

 ancient lodge still lying in the heath between great 

 hills. The huts are roofless, and the domes that rose 

 above each stone foundation have disappeared. Time 

 and man have broken their outer walls, and all that 

 could perish of them has passed with the blue 

 smoke that aforetime curled above each edifice ; 

 but their environment endures in a robe of many 

 colours. The ling still lights with rose each hill and 

 valley ; the furze still hangs a cloth of gold on the 

 shoulders of these ragged mountains. Where once 

 Danmonian babies ate wild berries and made their 

 little mouths as black as their eyes, small people still 

 straggle over the heath and take pleasure in the 

 fruits of the earth scattered there free of their plea- 

 sure. But the village children carry metal cans ; 

 those that went before those whose wild mothers sat 

 here and watched them on this same stone that gives 

 me rest knew nothing of the marvel of metal. Iron 

 and brass were hidden from them ; flint was still their 

 servant ; and to this day the rabbit scratches Neolithic 

 man's implement from his burrow, and the mole 

 throws up a stone-warrior's weapon as he breaks the 

 grass and piles dark earth in a little hill on the green. 

 From Hameldon shall be seen the watershed 

 of Devon extended. Dartmoor rises to stony peaks 

 and falls into deep gorges and placid valleys ; 

 beyond its tablelands, into the mist of distance, ex- 

 tends a mosaic of fields wrapped in milky hazes, 

 touched by sunshine, darkened by the shadows of 



