He conducted the boy out of the gravel pit and into the path leading
to his mother's cottage. When the little figure had vanished in the
darkness the reddleman returned, resumed his seat by the fire, and
proceeded to darn again.




9--Love Leads a Shrewd Man into Strategy


Reddlemen of the old school are now but seldom seen. Since the
introduction of railways Wessex farmers have managed to do without these
Mephistophelian visitants, and the bright pigment so largely used by
shepherds in preparing sheep for the fair is obtained by other routes.
Even those who yet survive are losing the poetry of existence which
characterized them when the pursuit of the trade meant periodical
journeys to the pit whence the material was dug, a regular camping out
from month to month, except in the depth of winter, a peregrination
among farms which could be counted by the hundred, and in spite of this
Arab existence the preservation of that respectability which is insured
by the never-failing production of a well-lined purse.

Reddle spreads its lively hues over everything it lights on, and stamps
unmistakably, as with the mark of Cain, any person who has handled it
half an hour.

A child's first sight of a reddleman was an epoch in his life. That
blood-coloured figure was a sublimation of all the horrid dreams
which had afflicted the juvenile spirit since imagination began. "The