up the straight
paved road from the sea. They helped the few pirates to destroy the
towns, and mixed with those pirates and shared the spoils of the Roman
villas, and were glad to see the captains and the priests destroyed.
They remain; and no admixture of the Frisian pirates, or the Breton, or
the Angevin and Norman conquerors, has very much affected their cunning
eyes.

To this race, I say, belonged the man who now approached me. And he said
to me, "Mowing?" And I answered, "Ar." Then he also said "Ar," as in
duty bound; for so we speak to each other in the Stenes of the Downs.

Next he told me that, as he had nothing to do, he would lend me a hand;
and I thanked him warmly, or, as we say, "kindly." For it is a good
custom of ours always to treat bargaining as though it were a courteous
pastime; and though what he was after was money, and what I wanted was
his labour at the least pay, yet we both played the comedy that we were
free men, the one granting a grace and the other accepting it. For the
dry bones of commerce, avarice and method and need, are odious to the
Valley; and we cover them up with a pretty body of fiction and
observances. Thus, when it comes to buying pigs, the buyer does not
begin to decry the pig and the vendor to praise it, as is the custom
with lesser men; but tradition makes them do business in this fashion:--

First the buyer will go up to the seller when he sees him in his own
steading, and, looking at the pig with admiration, the buyer will say
that rain may or may not fall, or that we shall have snow or thunder,
according to the time of year. Then the seller, looking critically at
the pig, will agree that the weather is as his friend maintains. There
is no haste at all; great leisure marks the dignity of their exchange.
And the next step is, that the buyer says: "That's a fine pig you have
there, Mr. ----" (giving the seller's name). "Ar, powerful fine pig."
Then the seller, saying also "Mr." (for twin brothers rocked in one
cradle give each other ceremonious observance here), the seller, I say,
admits, as though with reluctance, the strength and beauty of the pig,
and falls into deep thought. Then the buyer says, as though moved by a
great desire, that he is ready to give so much for the pig, naming half
the proper price, or a little less. Then the seller remains in silence
for some moments; and at last begins to shake his head slowly, till he
says: "I don't be thinking of selling the pi