of olden times. There never
was a face so battered by wind and weather as that of old Peter, the
owner of the ruin. His eyes were so light a grey as to appear all but
colourless. He wore a smock-frock the hue of dirt itself, and his
hands were ever in his pockets as he walked through rain and snow
beside his cart, hauling flints from the pits upon the Downs.

If the history of the cottage-folk is inquired into it will often be
found that they have descended from well-to-do positions in life--not
from extravagance or crime, or any remarkable piece of folly, but
simply from a long-continued process of muddling away money. When the
windmill was new, Peter's forefathers had been, for village people
well off. The family had never done anything to bring themselves into
disgrace; they had never speculated; but their money had been
gradually muddled away, leaving the last little better than a
labourer. To see him crawling along the road by his load of flints,
stooping forward, hands in pocket, and then to glance at the distant
windmill, likewise broken down, the roof open, and the rain and winds
rushing through it, was a pitiful spectacle. For that old building
represented the loss of hope and contentment in life as much as any
once lordly castle whose battlements are now visited only by the
jackdaw. The family had, as it were, foundered and gone down.

How they got the stray cattle into the pound it is difficult to
imagine; for the gate was very narrow, and neither bullocks nor horses
like being driven into a box. The copings of the wall on one side had
been pushed over, and lay in a thick growth of nettles: this, almost
the last of old village institutions, was, too, going by degrees to
destruction.

Every hamlet used to have its representative fighting-man--often more
than one--who visited the neighbouring villages on the feast days,
when there was a good deal of liquor flowing, to vaunt of their
prowess before the local champions. These quickly gathered, and after
due interchange of speeches not unlike the heroes of Homer, who
harangue each other ere they hurl the spear, engaged in conflict dire.
There was a regular feud for many years between the Okebourne men and
the Clipstone 'chaps;' and never did the stalwart labourers of those
two villages meet without falling to fisticuffs with right goodwill.
Nor did they like each other at all the worse, and after the battle
drank deeply from the same quart cups. Had these enco