ow limits his aspirations to
hares and pheasants, and too probably once in his life 'hits the
keeper into the river,' and reconsiders himself for a while over a
crank in Winchester gaol. Well, he has his faults, and I have mine.
But he is a thoroughly good fellow nevertheless. Civil, contented,
industrious, and often very handsome; a far shrewder fellow
too--owing to his dash of wild forest blood from gipsy, highwayman,
and what not--than his bullet-headed and flaxen-polled cousin, the
pure South Saxon of the chalk downs. Dark-haired he is, ruddy, and
tall of bone; swaggering in his youth: but when he grows old a
thorough gentleman, reserved, stately, and courteous as a
prince...."

[Illustration: _The Devil's Punch Bowl, from Gibbet Hill._]

Perhaps broom squires belong more properly to Thursley and the moors.
They are a disappearing race, and I have met few of them. But their
cottages, some of then mantled with ivy, some of them broken and
tumbling, some empty altogether, stand along the slopes of Highcombe
Bottom, which is the glen of the Punch Bowl, and dot themselves here and
there by the sandy lanes to the north. Compared with the loneliness of
some of these lanes, the wildest tract of Hindhead is a garden. The
flowerless, silent shade of a lane by Highcombe Bottom in August, when
no birds are singing, is the most solitary thing in the countryside.
But on Hindhead there is always wild life moving. I have seen strange
visitors there; as strange as any were a brood of pheasants, almost on
the highest ridge. Or perhaps even odder hill-dwellers are the tadpoles
which swarm in the summer in the little pools on the highest ridge
itself. What should frogs be doing on Hindhead? Perhaps they are toads.
But the happiest and the most graceful of all living things on Hindhead
are the swifts. To me, indeed, they are a part of the place; they belong
to that hot clear air over the height of the downs, to the sense of
immense distance of green fields spread south to Chanctonbury Ring and
north to Nettlebed by Henley. I never think of Hindhead without two
sights of summer; of children wandering over the hillside with their
lips stained with bilberries; and the swifts sailing in royal circles
high in the blue or screaming in pursuing companies, close and low over
the roadway down the hill.

[Illustration: _The Post Office, Churt._]

[Illustration: _The Red Lion, Thursley._]

C