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It was related to me by a middle-aged man, a shepherd of Warminster, who had it from his father, a shepherd of Chitterne, one of the lonely, isolated villages on Salisbury Plain, between the Avon and the Wylye. His father had it from the person who committed the crime and was anxious to tell it to some one, and knew that the shepherd was his true friend, a silent, safe man.
I sank back in the corner of the fly thoroughly dejected, and the vehicle drove out by what I knew to be the Warminster Road. We now left the lights of the town behind, and then the journey was entirely between two hedgerows, which bordered the road, with an occasional field gate by way of variety all else beyond was blank night, for there was no moon.
Warminster has "no villainous gingerbread houses running up and no nasty shabby-genteel people; no women trapesing about with showy gowns and dirty necks, no Jew-looking fellows with dandy coats, dirty shirts and half heels to their shoes. The great show-place and excursion from Warminster is Longleat.
Carry was the last one that had left her; and now Fanny hardly dared to name the word sister above her breath. She could speak, indeed, of Sister Jay, the wife of the prosperous ironmonger at Warminster; but of sisters by their Christian names no mention was ever made.
For many years, the average price of wheat was fifteen shillings a Winchester bushel; and as I recollect, and shall never forget, the way in which they carried themselves during these halcyon days of their happy fortune, I should like much to have a peep into Devizes market now, of a Thursday, or into Warminster market of a Saturday, just to see the contrast, just to observe how they look, and how they conduct themselves, now they are selling their best wheat for seven shillings a bushel, which is less than half the former price, while the rent is the same, the taxes the same, and the poor rates are higher, instead of lower!
It is not surprising that Caleb Bawcombe invariably speaks of his migration to, and of the time he passed at Warminster, when, as a fact, he was not there at all, but at Doveton, a little village on the Wylye a few miles below the town with the great name.
By "Castle" he meant Yarnborough Castle, the name of a vast prehistoric earthwork on one of the high downs between Warminster and Amesbury. There is no village there and no house near; it is nothing but an immense circular wall and trench, inside of which the fair is held.
Caleb had never gone with his flock on the down without the book, and had never passed a day without reading a portion. The incidents and observations gathered in many talks with the old shepherd, which I have woven into the foregoing chapters, relate mainly to the earlier part of his life, up to the time when, a married man and father of three small children, he migrated to Warminster.
A daughter was married to a tradesman at Warminster, and was also doing well. A second son who had once been sickly and weak, was a scholar in his way, and was now a schoolmaster, also at Warminster, and in great repute with the parson of the parish there.
Many of the most picturesque parks are but little known, lying as they do remote from railway stations. Mr. Nesfield, the great landscape-gardener, considers that Longleat, the marquis of Bath's, near Warminster, has greater natural advantages than any park in England, and that these have been made the most of.
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