taking possession of the one which his aggressor had let fall. He covered him for a couple of breaths, but the man's half-open eyes were fixed, nor was there any movement of the relaxed limbs. Blood began to ooze from the back of the fallen head.

"Dead as Herod!" was the victor's comment. "And look ye there, now; 'tis me purse he has in his hand, thief of the wor'rld that he is! A-well, my friend, exchange is no robbery; permit me."

Still holding the captured weapon ready for instant use, he bent over the fallen man, whom he relieved of a second pistol, a watch, and seals ("preshumably stolen") and a shamoy belt, which last he hastily bestowed in his own boot. He worked with the silent despatch of a man who expects interruption, and only when his transferences were completed, spared a glance at the lachrymose creature beside him.

"Liss noise, little man; attind now!" He shook him by the shoulder. "You are aware that I've yer dirthy neck in my breeches pocket? As ut happens, I've another use for ut, in fact, I give ut back to yez-ye may put ut in yer own-on conditions, mind, on conditions. Ye will now come up to London wid me- yes as if nothing had happened." The face of the cowering wretch unpuckered, expressing a half incredulous relief. "Oh, I mean ut. 'Will I be giving ye up?' I will not; that is if yez do as I tell ye. Ye were a sort of orderly to this dead tory

here, and it has lid ye to this. Be mine, me son, and ye'll not regret ut.” "Do-do ye mean to say-?" "That I ixtend to ye the royal pardon? I do that. But see this, now; I release ye on yer parowle, which is to serve me until I've done wid ye; and whin I speak of servus I mean military obejunce, hand, fut, and eyelid, and no argymunts. Ye may have observed that I'm apt to be a thrifle abrupt whin crossed. Is ut a bargain?"

Never was service more promptly exchanged.

"Yes, yes! O, I thank and bless you! I will pray for ye until the last day of my life."

"I may need ut. But yer first juty shall be to put up a bit of a prayer for yer frind here, who was a bould bhoy if iver I saw wan."

"Prayer for the dead! Sir, 'tis contrary to the Articles! I am a Protestant-Church of England as by law established."

"Mutiny, begad! Does the sniveller dispute me first command? Har'rk ye, now, small man. Yer ordhers are widout doubt heretical and invalud, but they'll be betther than none. I'm tould that ye're a kind of a sort of a priest, so down upon yer marrow-bones and to yer offus. Short work ye must make of ut, for the coach'll be waitin'; but the poor bhoy here shall not slip through yer fingers into hell-fire if ye can anyways smuggle him into purgatory. Begin now!"

Ashton Hilliers.

This morning when I woke and peered over my numberless blankets my breath was like steam in the cold, still air; I saw that the grass was white with frost and I drew my hands

watch the sunlight that comes through the pigeon-holes above me. These holes are really for ventilation but they serve other purposes. As soon as the sun is up it casts through them two deep copper-colored shafts of light seeming to set fire to the stray pieces of straw that dangle from the roof above me. There is no ceiling of any sort to conceal the thatch-in fact, my sleeping-place is like a wagon lodge.

Here in Kent a wagon lodge is built of massive uprights and beams, with the sides open so as to leave the wagons room to be trundled in and out. They are necessary and picturesque, and when they are not used for carts they serve as a storing-place for unwieldy farm implements that cannot easily be carried off by tramps or gipsies. My gardener, Wedman, calls these wanderers "waygoin' folks," and is seized with an apparently irrational panic whenever one of them comes along the road.

But here lying in my little shanty there is nothing to fear, for my collie who sleeps under my bed is always on the alert. I am quite at peace in the stillness of my hiding-place. There is nothing that glares, the tones of the rough unpainted chestnut posts, the sails, that can be let down as a shelter from wind and rain and snow, with their double seams of dark string, the thatched roof and yellow sanded floor all harmonize perfectly. With my eyes resting on them I am happy and more at peace than I have ever been.

Perched up very high on the edge of a green stony hill, I feel like an eagle in her nest. Before me there is a great deep stretch of sky, and it is a very light blue on this still morning; the sun glistens with a silver light on the streak of sea far out beyond the marsh, and the land at my feet is hazy and level and mysterious.

Wedman, who built this little nest, was very unhappy at the time, and

spent nights of anxiety fearing all sorts of disasters if I persisted in sleeping in such a place.

He said, "Wull, at any rate, you'll be better than the Son o' Man. You have a bed to sleep in and He had nowhere to lay His head."

I had a hard tussle with him over the thatch. "The eariwigs'll be dropping down on you and the birds'll come a-nesting," he said.

It is true the birds do come and so did the earwigs in the summer, but they are here for so short a time, and when they are once gone I begin to think that they really were not very unpleasant. They were here with the hot suns and cool clear nights-little summery things that seem very remote now and I have not the heart to think badly of them.

The birds come every morning through the same holes with the sun. At first they were shy, but I lie very still and as time goes on they come nearer and nearer. They hop about over my slippers now, and they no longer regard me as a human being. The sparrows are boisterous and rough. I am not very fond of sparrows. It is pleasant to watch the tomtit with its very distinct markings of black and yellow; it seems a gentle, soft-hearted thing amongst the tribe of bickering sparrows. But what pleases me most is a wren that creeps in alone like a little mouse. She runs about amongst the crevices between the rafters, tilting up her tiny twig-like bill as though she were already hunting for a future nesting-place and I am hoping that she will not leave me in the spring.

This morning when it was so frosty and so still I thought: "No need to get up yet-there's no gardening to see to to-day, because Wedman's going to the wood sale." Then my thoughts travelled to the good dinner that he would have after it-how he would enjoy the

slices of hot roast beef, the feeling of there being for once sufficient to cut and come again and time enough to sit and talk over it all at his leisure.

"The luxury of to-day is the necessity of to-morrow," I read yesterday in an article on "The Art of Dining." It dwelt on these necessities in tender and respectful phrases, as though the pitch of excellence that we think we have now attained must be nurtured and guarded from any devious path. There is no reason why it should not be.

It is an entrancing form of excitement, being borne along in spasmodic fits and starts between the lights and the crush of hurrying, glimmering faces and forms. The chilliness of bare shoulders under flimsy coverings creeps through every nerve and makes me more alive to every sound and word. I should not be nearly so fascinated by such an escapade wrapped up in a motor coat. At the end of the cold journey I am fully prepared to enjoy the warmth floating down the staircase from heated rooms, the thick carpets, the waiters with their tactful and attentive airs and the pulsating melodies from stringed instruments, strains that will mingle so well with my red wine.-Yes, it all carries one on until one believes, especially if one is young, that one is nearing, not Heaven perhaps, but a vague overpowering exaltation.

And I lay with my eyes on the silver streak of sea thinking about it for a long time. The more I thought, the more I became charmed with the fancy that I had conjured up for myself.

But after a time there came a change I was looking at the people in that electric lighted room-the others around me. Their faces seemed dull, as if they were watching for something that never comes. They had that set expression. They looked

as if they were longing for something either to laugh at or to dread, something ludicrous and heartless enough to be comic, something to tighten up the nerve threads with no matter what kind of emotion, some act of God, some fire or an earthquake alone would make them feel again that life was interesting, fascinating and wonderful. It made me sad to think that there is no exaltation for them in the art of dining-they are too used to it. Their senses are numbed by the continual occurrence of such episodes.

I turned my drowsy gaze to the storm candle on the window-sill. In the summer the opening had been cut in the woodwork by my bed, so that the sun should warm me while I drank my morning tea, but it is closed up now with a rush mat. The glass has not yet been put in-somehow although not very nervous, I cannot remain by an uncurtained window at night and the mere idea of a curtain in my rough shanty seems absurd.

That

"Yes," I thought, "why is it that we tire of things as soon as we have much of them?" And what depressed me particularly was the thought that with all his simplicity even Wedman if he had a wood-sale dinner every day would one day be gazing out with that same expression and would no longer be ready to laugh when the punch was spilt out of the ladle by the shaky hand of the biggest wood-buyer. ladle and bowl have been used year upon year and these dinners are one of the festive and most important events of the year. Here on the outskirts of the Weald there is enough wood sold every Michaelmas to keep the laborers at work through the winter. Wedman calls it "Getting in the woods out o' sight," and each man that buys a cant of wood is entitled to a dinner. It is a good dinner, too, more of meats and Christmas puddings than they can all eat, followed by

songs, drinks, tales of the past year and reminiscences of other wood-sale dinners. "A reg'lar enjoyable afternoon," I know Wedman will say, and as the heavy feet trudge along the road with stiffening limbs I think what a welcome change it will be from chopping down thorny hedges in lambskin gloves, or cleaning dykes in waterproof boots or lurching over heavy clinging earth behind a plough that will not furrow straight or deep, unless a man's whole attention be given to it. In the autumn before it was time to take up the potatoes Wedman went for a four days' holiday. He saw a good deal in that time. He told me he had been in five towns but he seemed quite glad to be back and at work again. Town life was not the life for him. He liked to be doing something out of doors, and I believe he would sicken and even die if he were compelled to live in a city with a circumscribed trade to follow. He would know that the change would bring him more companionship, more education and more pleasures of a town kind but they would not be a recompense for him. He would miss the open fields, the winding closed-in lanes, the scent of the air at dusk and dawn. When he comes up to work now Grisnez light and Dungeness too, are still flashing out in the queer winter morning obscurity. He would Iniss them-sometimes he mentions them-and most of all he would miss the woods.

Last night after his day's work we were talking about the sale. I said he ought to buy some cants for his sons to work. He said with a gently derisive laugh: "My sons work in the woods!" There are nine of them but only the two youngest are still at home. Education drives ideas into their heads very early. Daily papers are easily procurable and of an evening, reading through advertisement col2355

LIVING AGE. VOL. XLV.

umns they have each in turn made their choice. One is in the navy, one a policeman, one an insurance clerk, one a groom and so on. They are all fine men, and not one of them sufficiently simple-minded to stay on the land with his father. Of course, the work he does is too hard, and there is not enough pay in the country for young men with advanced ideas and exaggerated notions. I think there was a time when Wedman felt the same way. He has not always lived here and he tells me if he had been a· better scholar he would not be here now. I am glad for his own sake, as well as mine, that he was not. His fund of practical knowledge has no limit. There is nothing in a manual way that he cannot do. A good education would not have increased his intelligence and it might have marred his character. As it is his gray eyes, his long face and pointed beard, his thin, bending figure and his gentle manners suggest an Elizabethan courtier. He is always an interesting and cheerful companion.

I pictured him in that restaurant in London. He would be a distinguishedlooking person and evening dress would suit him. I think he would quite understand the art of dining, and he would command a hearing with his insight of his fellow man, his knowledge of material facts and his picturesque way of illustrating his statements. I think these qualities of his are always to be found only in those who are constantly and diligently wrapped up in their work. For them work, whether physical or mental, stands for contentment. It takes the place of pleasure and it is very near being the gate to Heaven. And it is this power of concentration of mind and body, this eternal striving after having a thing well done to the best of one's abilities that I admire so much.