to their manner, but bringing home little, except as much food
and drink as they could cleverly carry. The carrier went to and
from Newbury once a week; but he was a silent man, chiefly bent
on collecting and selling butter. The postman, who was deaf, only
went as far as the next village. The waggoners drove their
masters' produce to market from time to time, and boozed away an
hour or two in the kitchen, or tap, or skittle-alley, of some
small public-house in the nearest town, while their horses
rested. With the above exceptions, probably not one of the
villagers strayed ten miles from home, from year's end to year's
end. As to visitors, an occasional peddler or small commercial
traveller turned up about once a quarter. A few boys and girls,
more enterprising than their fellows, went out altogether into
the world, of their own accord, in the course of the year; and an
occasional burly ploughboy, or carter's boy, was entrapped into
taking the Queen's shilling by some subtle recruiting sergeant.
But few of these were seen again, except at long intervals. The
yearly village feasts, harvest homes, or a meet of the hounds on
Englebourn Common, were the most exciting events which in an
ordinary way stirred the surface of Englebourn life; only
faintest and most distant murmurs of the din and strife of the
great outer world, of wars, and rumors of wars, the fall of
governments, and the throes of nations, reached that primitive,
out-of-the-way little village.

A change was already showing itself since Miss Winter had been
old enough to look after the schools. The waters were beginning
to stir; and by this time, no doubt, the parish boasts a regular
book-hawker and reading-room; but at that day Englebourn was like
one of those small ponds you may find in some nook of a
hill-side, the banks grown over with underwood, to which neither
man nor beast, scarcely the winds of heaven, have any access.
When you have found such a pond, you may create a great
excitement amongst the easy-going newts and frogs who inhabit it,
by throwing in a pebble. The splash in itself is a small splash
enough, and the waves which circle away from it are very tiny
waves, but they move over the whole face of the pond, and are of
more interest to the frogs than a nor'-wester in the Atlantic.

So the approaching return of Harry Winburn, and the story of his
doings at the wars, and of the wonderful things he had sent home,
stirred Englebourn to its depth.