that he wore, there
was something about him which suggested that he naturally belonged to the
black-coated tribes of men. His clothes were of fustian, and his boots
hobnailed, yet in his progress he showed not the mud-accustomed bearing
of hobnailed and fustianed peasantry.

By the time that he had arrived abreast of the shepherd's premises the
rain came down, or rather came along, with yet more determined violence.
The outskirts of the little settlement partially broke the force of wind
and rain, and this induced him to stand still. The most salient of the
shepherd's domestic erections was an empty sty at the forward corner of
his hedgeless garden, for in these latitudes the principle of masking the
homelier features of your establishment by a conventional frontage was
unknown. The traveller's eye was attracted to this small building by the
pallid shine of the wet slates that covered it. He turned aside, and,
finding it empty, stood under the pent-roof for shelter.

While he stood, the boom of the serpent within the adjacent house, and
the lesser strains of the fiddler, reached the spot as an accompaniment
to the surging hiss of the flying rain on the sod, its louder beating on
the cabbage-leaves of the garden, on the eight or ten beehives just
discernible by the path, and its dripping from the eaves into a row of
buckets and pans that had been placed under the walls of the cottage. For
at Higher Crowstairs, as at all such elevated domiciles, the grand
difficulty of housekeeping was an insufficiency of water; and a casual
rainfall was utilized by turning out, as catchers, every utensil that the
house contained. Some queer stories might be told of the contrivances
for economy in suds and dish-waters that are absolutely necessitated in
upland habitations during the droughts of summer. But at this season
there were no such exigencies; a mere acceptance of what the skies
bestowed was sufficient for an abundant store.

At last the notes of the serpent ceased and the house was silent. This
cessation of activity aroused the solitary pedestrian from the reverie
into which he had lapsed, and, emerging from the shed, with an apparently
new intention, he walked up the path to the house-door. Arrived here,
his first act was to kneel down on a large stone beside the row of
vessels, and to drink a copious draught from one of them. Having
quenched his thirst he rose and lifted his hand to knock, but paused with
his eye u