t of leaving folk severely to themselves, so
far as their thoughts and feelings were concerned.

The cottagers with whom I talked that summer's evening cherished a
monumental ignorance regarding the real significance of the events
which had shaken England to its very roots since I had last seen Tarn
Regis. Gammer Joy's view seemed to be fairly typical. We had become
German; England belonged to Germany; the Radicals had sold us to the
Kaiser--and so forth. But no German soldiers had been seen in Dorset.
The whole thing was shadowy, academic, a political business; suitable
enough for the discussion of Londoners, no doubt, but, after all, of
small bearing upon questions of real and intimate interest, such as the
harvest, the weather, and the rate of wages.

"Sims queer, too, that us should be born again like, and become
Germans," said one man to me; "but ah doan't know as it meakes much odds
to the loike o' we; though ah hev heerd as how Farmer Jupp be thinkin'
o' gettin' shut o' his shartharn bull that won the prize to Davenham,
an' doin' wi' fower men an' a b'y, in place o' sevin. Well, o' course,
us has to keep movin' wi' the times, as sayin' is; an' 'tis trew them
uplan' pastures o' Farmer Jupp's they do be mos' onusual poor an' leery,
as you med say."

Twilight already held the land in its grave embrace when I made my way
along Abbott's Lane (my father had devoted months to the task of tracing
the origin of that name) and began the ascent of Barebarrow, by crossing
which diagonally one reaches the Davenham turnpike from Tarn Regis, a
shorter route by nearly a mile than that of the road past the mill and
over the bridge. And so, presently, my feet were treading turf which had
probably been turf before the Christian era. Smooth and vast against the
sky-line, Barebarrow lay above me, like a mammoth at rest.

On its far side was our Tarn Regis giant, a famous figure cut in the
turf, and clearly visible from the tower of Davenham Minster. Long ago,
in my earliest childhood, village worthies had given me the story of
this figure--how once upon a time a giant came and slew all the Tarn
Regis flocks for his breakfast. Then he lay down to sleep behind
Barebarrow, and while he slept the enraged shepherds and work-folk bound
him with a thousand cart-ropes, and slew him with a thousand scythes and
forks and other homely implements. And then, that posterity might know
his fearsome bulk, they cut out the turf all round his form,