He was of that dark silent race upon which all the learned quarrel, but which, by whatever meaningless name it may be called—­Iberian, or Celtic, or what you will—­is the permanent root of all England, and makes England wealthy and preserves it everywhere, except perhaps in the Fens and in a part of Yorkshire.  Everywhere else you will find it active and strong.  These people are intensive; their thoughts and their labours turn inward.  It is on account of their presence in these islands that our gardens are the richest in the world.  They also love low rooms and ample fires and great warm slopes of thatch.  They have, as I believe, an older acquaintance with the English air than any other of all the strains that make up England.  They hunted in the Weald with stones, and camped in the pines of the green-sand.  They lurked under the oaks of the upper rivers, and saw the legionaries go up, up the straight paved road from the sea.  They helped the few pirates to destroy the towns, and mixed with those pirates and shared the spoils of the Roman villas, and were glad to see the captains and the priests destroyed.  They remain; and no admixture of the Frisian pirates, or the Breton, or the Angevin and Norman conquerors, has very much affected their cunning eyes.

To this race, I say, belonged the man who now approached me.  And he said to me, “Mowing?” And I answered, “Ar.”  Then he also said “Ar,” as in duty bound; for so we speak to each other in the Stenes of the Downs.

Next he told me that, as he had nothing to do, he would lend me a hand; and I thanked him warmly, or, as we say, “kindly.”  For it is a good custom of ours always to treat bargaining as though it were a courteous pastime; and though what he was after was money, and what I wanted was his labour at the least pay, yet we both played the comedy that we were free men, the one granting a grace and the other accepting it.  For the dry bones of commerce, avarice and method and need, are odious to the Valley; and we cover them up with a pretty body of fiction and observances.  Thus, when it comes to buying pigs, the buyer does not begin to decry the pig and the vendor to praise it, as is the custom with lesser men; but tradition makes them do business in this fashion:—­

First the buyer will go up to the seller when he sees him in his own steading, and, looking at the pig with admiration, the buyer will say that rain may or may not fall, or that we shall have snow or thunder, according to the time of year.  Then the seller, looking critically at the pig, will agree that the weather is as his friend maintains.  There is no haste at all; great leisure marks the dignity of their exchange.  And the next step is, that the buyer says:  “That’s a fine pig you have there, Mr. ——­” (giving the seller’s name).  “Ar, powerful fine pig.”  Then the seller, saying also “Mr.” (for twin brothers rocked in one cradle give each other ceremonious observance here), the seller, I say, admits, as though with reluctance,