III. Travellers’ Tales. SEPTEMBER 210 I. Odd Man out—The Little Tobacconist—A Talk by the River. II. The Waning Summer—Threshing. III. Two Old Maids—The Minstrels. IV. Autumn Dawn—The Cub Hunt—Thistle-down. OCTOBER 234 I. The Going of the Martins—Spider-Webs. II. A Legacy—The Caravan. III. Gossamer—The Berry Harvest—Autumn Changes—The Brown Owl—Glowworms—Birds that Pass in the Night. NOVEMBER 257 I. The Colours of Autumn—The Ivy Bloom—The Two Painters—A November Nosegay. II. Night in the Village—Tom Clemmer—Dinner at the Farm. III. Winter at Last—Capitulation. DECEMBER 283 I. Gloom and Shine. II. House-Bound—A Happy Village. III. A Voyage down the Street—The Beef Club Drawing. IV. The Christmas-Tree—Voices in the Night. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS HOMEWARD BOUND _Frontispiece_ OLD FRIENDS 28 SPRINGTIME 48 THE RINDERS 80 THE BEE-MASTER (_missing_) 122 THE SHEEP-WASH 146 SOUTHDOWN EWES 200 THE FERRYMAN’S COTTAGE 280 INTRODUCTION IF you love the quiet of the country—the real quiet which is not silence at all, but the blending of a myriad scarce-perceptible sounds—you will get it in Windlecombe, heaped measure, pressed down, and running over, year in and year out. The village lies just where Arun river breaks the green rampart of the Sussex Downs. To the west, the lowest cottages dwindle almost to the water’s brink. Northward and eastward, the highest buildings stand afar off, clear cut against the blue wall of the sky; while in between, filling the deep, steep combe, church and inn and every kind of dwelling-house, little or big, huddle together under their thatch and old red tiles, with the village green in their midst, and a thread of white road rippling through them all and up the steep combe-side till it is lost in the sunny waste of the hills.