Page:The English Peasant.djvu/181

 dotted with leafy parks and dark umbrageous woodlands: while from among the trees peep the towns and villages, each nestling around its ancient church, the whole scene closed in by the forest ridge which rises far off, crowned with dark fir copses.

In the centre of the ring is an open space, soft with the debris of a hundred autumns. The giant elms stretch out their long arms and shade it from the sun; while those around send up their branches heavenwards. On one side is a wood of pines, through which the wind moans mournful as the roar of the waves on the sea-shore.

Beneath their shadow was an old shepherd tending his flock. He was an old man—seventy-five years of age, he said; but he looked much younger. His hair was only partially grey, and his honest face might have been quite handsome, had it not been for a rather Hebrew nose which the winds of sixty years had coloured into a bright red. He was a man of character, and spoke in a strong, decided manner, but with no roughness. "You be right, sir," said he again and again. "Sure it be, sir."

But when I tried to learn something about the way a shepherd was paid he would give me no direct answer. Perhaps he thought it beneath his self-respect to do so; or maybe it was his Sussex breeding, so that he naturally fenced with any question which he deemed important.

In former times the shepherd had an interest in the flock. Shepherds kept their own sheep amongst those of their masters, just as Jacob kept his among the flocks of Laban. Many, too, had their own little bits of land. "Shepherds' Acres" is still the name attached to some pieces of ground, but they are all absorbed into the larger properties. The possession of property, however small, gives a permanent character to a family, so that there were shepherding families on the South Downs who, if they had consulted the parish register, could have traced their ancestry as far back as the times of the Stuarts.

The old shepherd of Chanctonbery Ring was not, however, a hireling. He knew every sheep in his flock personally, and thought the sheep knew him. He had been "sixty years on the Downs, Sundays and week-days, and had his health, sure, thank God."