WINTER IN WEST DOWNLAND 295 



and at an enormous cost, which fail to please us, 

 and are often even distressing to look at, all because 

 they are out of place where they stand — out of keep- 

 ing and out of harmony with every building and every 

 object near them, and with the surrounding scenery. 



An account of the last day but one spent by me 

 at this pleasant spot will perhaps strike the reader 

 as a not inappropriate ending of this chapter, and of 

 the book. It was a spring-like day in mid-February 

 (1900), a few miles from Harting, when, after dinner, 

 I went out for a long walk with a man who was 

 a native of the place. It is the rarest thing for me 

 to have a companion out of doors : a day in the 

 woods or any wild place with another is to me, in 

 most cases, a wasted day. But with this man I went 

 gladly; for although not an educated person, and no 

 naturalist, there was that in him which made him 

 to differ from the others of his class: in his way of 

 thinking and mode of life he was somewhat apart. 

 Besides, he badly wanted to show me something, and 

 to tell me something. What he wanted to show me 

 was the scenery amid which he had lived; and he 

 took me a round of twelve or fourteen miles, in the 

 course of which we came two or three times on the 

 Rother and followed its windings for some distance; 

 we also visited two or three pretty little rustic villages, 

 and passed through several woods and copses, and up 



