Lately, in October 1902, I heard the finish of the story. I found an old woman, a widow named Garnett, an elder sister of the woman at Wolmer Forest. She is eighty years old, but was not born until a year or two after the "Selborne mob" events, which fixes the date of that outbreak about the year 1820. She has a brother, now in a workhouse, about two years older than herself, who was a babe in arms at that time. When Newland was at last captured and sent to Winchester, his poor wife, with her baby in her arms, set out on foot to visit him in gaol. It was a long tramp for her thus burdened, and it was also in the depth of one of the coldest winters ever known. She started early, but did not get to her destination until the following morning, and not without suffering a fresh misfortune by the way. Before dawn, when the cold was most intense, while walking over Winchester Hill, her baby's nose was frozen; and though everything proper was done when she arrived at the houses, it never got quite right. His injured nose, which turns to a dark-blue colour and causes him great suffering in cold weather, has been a trouble and misery to him all his life long.
Story of the horn-blower
Newland, we know, was forgiven and returned to spend the rest of his life in his village, where he died at last of sheer old age, passing very quietly away after receiving the sacrament from the vicar, and in the presence of his faithful old wife and his children and grandchildren.
After he was dead, two of his children—my informant, and that brother who as a babe had travelled to Winchester in his mother's arms in cold weather—talked together about him and his life, and of all he had suffered and of his goodness, and in both their minds there was one idea, an anxious wish that his descendants should not allow him to go out of memory. And there was no way known to them to keep him in mind except by burying him in some spot by himself, where his mound would be alone and apart. Finally, brother and sister, plucking up courage, went to the vicar, the well-remembered Mr. Parsons, who built the new vicarage and the church school, and begged him to let them bury their father by the yew tree near the porch, and he good-naturedly consented.
That was how Newland came to be buried at that spot; but before many days the vicar went to them in a great state of mind, and said that he had made a terrible mistake, that he had done wrong in consenting to the grave being made there, and that their father must be taken up and placed at some other spot in the churchyard. They were grieved at this, but could say nothing. But for some reason the removal never took place, and in time the son and daughter themselves began to regret that they had buried their father there where they could never keep the mound green and fresh. People going in or coming out of church on dark evenings stumbled or kicked their boots against it, or when they stood there talking to each other they would rest a foot on it, and romping children sat on it, so that it always had a ragged, unkept appearance, do what they would.
It is certainly an unsightly mound. It would be better to do away with it, and to substitute a small memorial stone with a suitable inscription placed level with the turf.
CHAPTER XI
The Hampshire people—Racial differences in neighbouring counties—A neglected subject—Inhabitants of towns—Gentry and peasantry—Four distinct types—The common blonde type—Lean women—Deleterious effects of tea-drinking—A shepherd's testimony—A mixed race—The Anglo-Saxon—Case of reversion of type—Un-Saxon character of the British—Dark-eyed Hampshire people—Racial feeling with regard to eye-colours—The Iberian type—Its persistence—Character of the small dark man—Dark and blonde children—A dark village child.