perly punished.

In his dress he was as remarkable as in his figure. Bright blue trousers
much too small for his stout legs, once the property, no doubt, of
some sporting young gent of loud tastes in colours; a spotted fancy
waistcoat, not long enough to meet the trousers, a dirty scarlet tie,
long black frock-coat, shiny in places, and a small dirty grey cap which
only covered the topmost part of his head of golden hair.

Walking by the hedge-side he picked and devoured the late blackberries,
which were still abundant. It was a beautiful unkept hedge with scarlet
and purple fruit among the many-coloured fading leaves and silver-grey
down of old-man's-beard.

I too picked and ate a few berries and made the remark that it was late
to eat such fruit in November. The Devil in these parts, I told him,
flies abroad in October to spit on the bramble bushes and spoil the
fruit. It was even worse further north, in Norfolk and Suffolk, where
they say the Devil goes out at Michaelmas and shakes his verminous
trousers over the bushes.

He didn't smile; he went on sternly eating blackberries, and then
remarked in a bitter tone, "That Devil they talk about must have a busy
time, to go messing about blackberry bushes in addition to all his other
important work."

I was silent, and presently, after swallowing a few more berries, he
resumed in the same tone: "Very fine, very beautiful all this"--waving
his hand to indicate the hedge, its rich tangle of purple-red stems
and coloured leaves, and scarlet fruit and silvery oldman's-beard. "An
artist enjoys seeing this sort of thing, and it's nice for all those who
go about just for the pleasure of seeing things. But when it comes to a
man tramping twenty or thirty miles a day on an empty belly, looking for
work which he can't find, he doesn't see it quite in the same way."

"True," I returned, with indifference.

But he was not to be put off by my sudden coldness, and he proceeded to
inform me that he had just returned from Salisbury Plain, that it had
been noised abroad that ten thousand men were wanted by the War Office
to work in forming new camps. On arrival he found it was not so--it was
all a lie--men were not wanted--and he was now on his way to Andover,
penniless and hungry and--

By the time he had got to that part of his story we were some distance
apart, as I had remained standing still while he, thinking me still
close behind, had gone on picking blackberries and talki