Looking round one saw that it was not an impressive country.  There were no hills, no grandeurs, no proximity to the sea.  It was a country whose pageants were made, not by great heights or sombre woods, but by the orderly and coloured procession of the harvests; where one recovered the preoccupied sight of little children, seeing so much to absorb one near the ground that one did not seek the horizon; where matters were measured and done not by the clock but by the sun’s height, by midday heat and darkness, by the lowing of cows or the calling of lambs.

A woman, well on the way to middle age, sat in the house-place of a small cottage on the white high-road.  Everything had been done for the night, the pigs and pony fed; the cow milked and the milk strained; the churn cleaned and the cream standing.  The hens had been driven in and were almost asleep on their perches.  The wood was ready for the morning and the clock had been wound up.  She had not had her supper yet she did not remove her sun-bonnet or yard-boots.  She cut herself a slice of stale bread and a large piece of cheese, dipped a cup in the barrel of buttermilk and sat down on a low stool with the bread and cheese in one hand and the cup of milk in the other.  She was evidently in great perturbation, for at times she forgot to eat altogether and sat with the bread and cheese suspended in her hand while she thought deeply.  Her rather large plain features had a dignity of expression which was pleasing, though it betrayed a tendency to melancholy.  She had no frown, for her blue eyes were of excellent strength and one does not sit up late in the country.  She was tall and rather bony, a strong peasant woman.

Presently she rose, her supper still unfinished, and took from a shelf, from among a medley of herbs and medicine bottles, a penny bottle of ink with a pen sticking in it.  Searching in a drawer of the round table she found a large envelope on which was written, “Giant pennyworth of note.”  She took from it one of the thin bluish sheets of paper, and sitting at the table, her sun-bonnet making a grotesque shadow behind her, she began to write.  She wrote with little hesitation, urged by the strength of some feeling.  Her handwriting was large and she made long loops to her g’s.

“Dear sir,—­Though you passed by my cottage yesterday you are so unknown to me by sight, that I have only just discovered who it was that was brought to such a pitiable condition before me.  First, sir, let me describe to you what a sight I saw before me, when, hearing a great plunging and shouting in the road, I came out from the shippon to see what was the matter.

“I saw, sir, a strong, well-looking, well-dressed young man of twenty-six lying in the mud of the road, his foot in one stirrup of his horse, he, mad with drink cursing, first the poor horse (a very quiet stallion), then the road (a very easy one) and last, the Almighty God of love.