Twenty times did I confidently expect to see baggage, chaise, pony, boy, all rolling down into the bottom of a valley together.

But no! Not the least little accident happened to spoil my enjoyment of the day.

Politically contemptible, Finch's boy had his merit--he was master of his subject as guide and pony-leader among the South Down Hills.
Arrived at the top of (as it seemed to me) our fiftieth grassy summit, I began to look about for signs of the village.
Behind me, rolled back the long undulations of the hills, with the cloud-shadows moving over the solitudes that we had left.

Before me, at a break in the purple distance, I saw the soft white line of the sea.
Beneath me, at my feet, opened the deepest valley I had noticed yet--with one first sign of the presence of Man scored hideously on the face of Nature, in the shape of a square brown patch of cleared and ploughed land on the grassy slope.

I asked if we were getting near the village now.
Finch's boy winked, and answered, "Yes, we be." Astonishing Finch's boy! Ask him what questions I might, the resources of his vocabulary remained invariably the same.