‘Yesterday a Londoner was in the village,’ I told him, for a start, ‘and he was scoffing at our Downs. “Where,” said he, “are the green highlands of Sussex I have read so much about? Why, the hills are not green, but brown!” And it was quite true at this season, and from his standpoint down in the valley. Up here we can see what gives the Downs their rich bronze colour in summer-time. From below they looked parched and sunburnt, as though nothing could grow for the heat and drought. But now I can see that the general brown tone is really a mingling of a thousand living hues. Looking straight down as you walk, the turf is as green as ever it was; but a dozen paces onward all this fresh verdure is lost under the greys and drabs of the seeding grass-heads. Then again, the brown colour is due just as much to the blending of all other colours that the eye separates at a close view, but confuses from afar. We are walking on a carpet of flowers; we cannot avoid trampling them, if we are to set foot to the ground at all. Yellow goatsbeard and vetchling, and the little trefoil with the blood-red tips to its petals, and golden hawkweed everywhere; for blues, there are millions of plantains, and sheepsbit, and harebells; and the wild thyme purples half the hillside, making the bright carmine of the orchids brighter still wherever it blows. But I have not reckoned in half the flowers that—’ ‘Hold, enough! I am sick of your Londoner, and of every human being for the moment. Listen to the free, glorious wind! Down in the valley there we always think of the wind as a creature with a voice—something striding through the sky and calling as it goes. But up here we know that it is the earth that calls. Hark to it swishing, and surging, and sighing for miles round! The sound is never overhead on these treeless wastes, but always underfoot. You keep head and shoulders up in the soundless sunshine, and walk in a maelstrom. Did you ever think that the larks always sing in the midst of silence, no matter how hard the wind blows? Those are George Artlett’s sheep we are coming to, are they not? I ought to know the old dog’s talk!’