Then the proud moment when Bill the driver, with legs apart, almost pushing on the reins, drives his horses up the hill.

“Go it, Dick.  Let ‘er out, Daisy.  Stiddy, ol’ boy.  Whoa, there.  Ease down now.  Hey, there, John, block the wheel—­block the wheel I tell ye.  Ah-h now, jes’ breathe a bit.  I jing, it’s hot.”

And then the barn, the cavernous dark doors, the hoofs of the horses thundering on the floor, the smell of cattle from below, the pigeons in the loft whirring startled from their perches.  Then the hot, scented, dusty “pitching off” and “mowing in”—­a fine process, an honest process:  men sweating for what they get.

As I came in from the field that night the sun was low in the hills, and a faint breeze had begun to blow, sweetly cool after the burning heat of the day.  And I felt again that curious deep sense I have so often here in the country, of the soundness and reality of the plain things of life.

CHAPTER X

THE OLD STONE MASON

Of well-flavoured men, I know none better than those who live close to the soil or work in common things.  Men are like roses and lilacs, which, too carefully cultivated to please the eye, lose something of their native fragrance.  One of the best-flavoured men I know is my friend, the old stone mason.

To-day I rode over with the old stone mason to select some wide stones for steps in my new building.  The old man loves stones.  All his life long—­he is now beyond seventy years old—­he has lived among stones, lifted stones, fitted stones.  He knows all the various kinds, shapes, sizes, and where they will go best in a wall.  He can tell at a glance where to strike a stone to make it fit a particular place, and out of a great pile he can select with a shrewd eye the stone for the exact opening he has to fill.  He will run his stubby rough hand over a stone and remark: 

“Fine face that.  Ye don’t see many such stones these days,” as though he were speaking of the countenance of a friend.

I veritably believe there are stones that smile at him, stones that frown at him, stones that appear good or ill-humoured to him as he bends his stocky strong body to lift or lay them.  He is a slow man, a slow, steady, geologic man, as befits one who works with the elemental stuff of nature.  His arms are short and his hands powerful.  He has been a servant of stones in this neighbourhood alone for upward of fifty years.

He loves stones and can no more resist a good stone than I a good book.  When going about the country, if he sees comely stones in a wayside pile, or in a fine-featured old fence he will have them, whether or no, and dickers for them with all the eagerness, sly pride, and half-concealed cunning with which a lover of old prints chaffers for a Seymour Haden in a second-hand book shop.  And when he has bought them he takes the first idle day he has, and with