Discreetly as
he lived and little as he fared, he was at first a thing of doubt and
suspicion, and won respect by slow degrees. Was he a coiner, stirring
alloys over his night fires? Was he Antichrist, blaspheming the Trinity at
daybreak? He was talked of by gaitered farmers at sheep-fairs, by
teamsters at cross-roads, by maidens and their sweethearts on Sundays. The
shepherds, it was thought, might have told more than they did. It was
understood that they had caught him at his secrets times and again. But
the shepherds had little to say of him but that he was a mellow man,
knowing sheep and weather, and not imparting all that he knew. Similarly
the gypsies, who alone travel the Race-plain in these days, and mostly by
night, were believed to know him well; but they, too, kept their lore
within the limits of their own shifty realm.
Rarely, indeed, he was seen. Sunday lovers, strolling hand in hand up
the valley, came to a point where they went tiptoe and peered about
for him. He might be described motionless, folded in his white robe,
midway between ridge and hollow; or a gleam of him flashed between
the trees of the brake would perhaps be all that they would get for
an hour of watching.
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