Labouring friends of mine often bring me relics of the stone age which they have picked up whilst at work in the fields.  Quite recently a shepherd brought me a knife blade and two flint arrow-heads.  He also tells me they have lately found a “himmige” up in old Mr. Peregrine’s “barn-ground.”  Tom Peregrine possesses a bag of old coins of all dates and sizes, which he tells you with great pride have been an heirloom in his family for generations.

When we once more resume our pilgrimage along the track which leads to Chedworth we find ourselves in a country which is never explored by the tourist.  Far removed from railways and the “busy haunts of men,” it is not even mentioned in the guide-books.  Our way lies along the edge of the hill for the next few miles, and we look down upon the picturesque valley of the Coln.  Four villages, all very like those we have described, are passed in rapid succession.  Winson, Coln Rogers, Coln-St.-Dennis, and Fossbridge all lie below us as we wend our way westwards.  But although the architecture is of the same massive yet graceful style, and the old Norman churches still tower their grand old heads and cast their shadows over the cottages and farm buildings, there are no manor houses of note in any of these four villages, and no well-timbered demesnes; so that they are not so interesting as some of those we have passed through.  In all, however, there dwell the good old honest labouring folk, toiling hard day by day at “the trivial round, the common task,” just earning enough to scrape up a livelihood, but enjoying few of the amenities of life.  The village parsons—­good, pious men—­share in the quiet, uneventful life of their flock.  And who shall contemn their lot?  As Horace tells us: 

     “Vivitur parvo bene, cui paternum
      Splendet in mensa tenui salinum
      Nec leves somnos timor aut cupido
      Sordidus aufert.”

These four villages were all built two centuries or more ago, when the Cotswolds were the centre of much life and activity and the days of agricultural depression were not known.  When we look down on their old, grey houses nestling among the great trees which thrive by the banks of the fertilising stream, we cannot but speculate on their future fate.  Gradually the population diminishes, as work gets scarcer and scarcer.  Unless there is an unexpected revival in prices through some measure of “protection” being granted by law, or the medium of a great European war, or some such far-reaching dispensation of Providence, terrible to think of for those who live to see it, but with all its possibilities of “good arising out of evil” for future generations, these old villages will contain scarcely a single inhabitant in a hundred year’s time.  This part of the Cotswold country will once more become a huge open plain, retaining only long rows of tumbled-down stone walls as evidences of its former enclosed state; no longer on Sundays will the notes of the beautiful