vicar himself, my put-upon host, a man of so blithe a nature,
so human and companionable, that when I, a perfect stranger
without an introduction or any excuse for such intrusion came
down like a wolf on his luncheon-table, he received me as if I
had been an old friend or one of his own kindred, and freely
gave up his time to me for the rest of that day. To count his
years he was old: he had been vicar of Coombe for half a
century, but he was a young man still and had never had a
day's illness in his life--he did not know what a headache
was. He smoked with me, and to prove that he was not a total
abstainer he drank my health in a glass of port wine--very
good wine. It was Coombe that did it--its peaceful life,
isolated from a distracting world in that hollow hill, and the
marvellous purity of its air. "Sitting there on my lawn," he
said, "you are six hundred feet above the sea, although in a
hollow four hundred feet deep." It was an ideal open-air
room, round and green, with the sky for a roof. In winter it
was sometimes very cold, and after a heavy fall of snow the
scene was strange and impressive from the tiny village set in
its stupendous dazzling white bowl. Not only on those rare
arctic days, but at all times it was wonderfully quiet. The
shout of a child or the peaceful crow of a cock was the
loudest sound you heard. Once a gentleman from London town
came down to spend a week at the parsonage. Towards evening
on the very first day he grew restless and complained of the
abnormal stillness. "I like a quiet place well enough," he
exclaimed, "but this tingling silence I can't stand!" And
stand it he wouldn't and didn't, for on the very next morning
he took himself off. Many years had gone by, but the vicar
could not forget the Londoner who had come down to invent a