Into the great ridge of chalk which is the backbone of South Wilts, and
runs east and west from Sarum to Shaftesbury, there cuts up from the south
a deep, winding, and narrow valley. The hills, between whose breasts it
runs a turfy way, fold one into the other; a man coming up from Blandford,
and minded to strike across country to Marlborough, might well pass within
two hundred yards of our recluse and never see a sign of him. It was at
the head of this glen, sheltered by hills from north, east, and west, but
open full to the south, he had built his one-storied, deep-eaved house of
larch and shingles. Here, under the sky, he watched and laboured and
slept, and saw nobody, living principally on vegetables of his own
growing, and cheese, which he made from the milk of a flock of goats.
Bread he had once a week from a peasant's cottage at the valley's foot;
gypsy folk brought him occasionally tea and tobacco. For the most part he
drank water, and was too good a traveller to be rooted to his pipe.
The group behind him sloped sharply up to the ridge, which we call the
Race-Plain in those parts, and had nourished, when he first took up his
rest below it, little but nettles, mulleins, and scrub of elder.
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