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.