play me false with that fellow at the lodgings! Let me see: the
dates--the second week in August . . . the third week in May . . . Yes .
. . yes . . . Get away, you poor little brat! You are nothing to me!'

1893.




THE THREE STRANGERS


Among the few features of agricultural England which retain an appearance
but little modified by the lapse of centuries, may be reckoned the high,
grassy and furzy downs, coombs, or ewe-leases, as they are indifferently
called, that fill a large area of certain counties in the south and south-
west. If any mark of human occupation is met with hereon, it usually
takes the form of the solitary cottage of some shepherd.

Fifty years ago such a lonely cottage stood on such a down, and may
possibly be standing there now. In spite of its loneliness, however, the
spot, by actual measurement, was not more than five miles from a county-
town. Yet that affected it little. Five miles of irregular upland,
during the long inimical seasons, with their sleets, snows, rains, and
mists, afford withdrawing space enough to isolate a Timon or a
Nebuchadnezzar; much less, in fair weather, to please that less repellent
tribe, the poets, philosophers, artists, and others who 'conceive and
meditate of pleasant things.'

Some old earthen camp or barrow, some clump of trees, at least some