s, it was a perfect day at Hurstbourne
Tarrant, though not everywhere, for on that third of November the
greatest portion of Southern England was drowned in a cold dense white
fog. In London it was dark, I heard. Early in the morning I listened
to a cirl-bunting singing merrily from a bush close to the George and
Dragon Inn. This charming bird is quite common in the neighbourhood,
although, as elsewhere in England, the natives know it not by its book
name, nor by any other, and do not distinguish it from its less engaging
cousin, the yellowhammer.

After breakfast I strolled about the common and in Doles Wood, on the
down above the village, listening to the birds, and on my way back
encountered a tramp whose singular appearance produced a deep impression
on my mind. We have heard of a work by some modest pressman entitled
"Monarchs I have met", and I sometimes think that one equally
interesting might be written on "Tramps I have met". As I have neither
time nor stomach for the task, I will make a present of the title to
any one of my fellow-travellers, curious in tramps, who cares to use
it. This makes two good titles I have given away in this chapter with a
borrowed one.

But if it had been possible for me to write such a book, a prominent
place would be given in it to the one tramp I have met who could be
accurately described as gorgeous. I did not cultivate his acquaintance;
chance threw us together and we separated after exchanging a few polite
commonplaces, but his big flamboyant image remains vividly impressed on
my mind.

At noon, in the brilliant sunshine, as I came loiteringly down the long
slope from Doles Wood to the village, he overtook me. He was a huge man,
over six feet high, nobly built, suggesting a Scandinavian origin, with
a broad blond face, good features, and prominent blue eyes, and his
hair was curly and shone like gold in the sunlight. Had he been a mere
labourer in a workman's rough clay-stained clothes, one would have stood
still to look at and admire him, and say perhaps what a magnificent
warrior he would have looked with sword and spear and plumed helmet,
mounted on a big horse! But alas! he had the stamp of the irreclaimable
blackguard on his face; and that same handsome face was just then
disfigured with several bruises in three colours--blue, black, and red.
Doubtless he had been in a drunken brawl on the previous evening and had
perhaps been thrown out of some low public-house and pro