One evening of late summer, before the nineteenth century had reached one-third of its span, a young man and woman, the latter carrying a child, were approaching the large village of Weydon-Priors, in Upper Wessex, on foot. They were plainly but not ill clad, though the thick hoar of dust which had accumulated on their shoes and garments from an obviously long journey lent a disadvantageous shabbiness to their appearance just now.

The man was of fine figure, swarthy, and stern in aspect; and he showed in profile a facial angle so slightly inclined as to be almost perpendicular¹. He wore a short jacket of brown corduroy, newer than the remainder of his suit, which was a fustian³ waistcoat with white horn buttons, breeches of the same, tanned leggings, and a straw hat overlaid with black glazed⁴ canvas. At his back he carried by a looped strap⁵ a rush basket, from which protruded⁶ at one end the crutch⁷ of a hay-knife, a wimble for hay-bonds being also visible in the aperture⁸. His measured, springless walk was the walk of the skilled countryman as distinct from the desultory⁹ shamble of the general labourer; while in the turn and plant of each foot there was, further, a dogged and cynical¹⁰ indifference¹¹ personal to himself, showing its presence even in the regularly interchanging fustian folds, now in the left leg, now in the right, as he paced along.

What was really peculiar¹², however, in this couple's progress, and would have attracted the attention of any casual observer otherwise disposed to overlook them, was the perfect silence they preserved. They walked side by side in such a way as to suggest afar off the low, easy,

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