grumbled a good deal, but he
supposed the bailiff knew best; so he told him to see what could be
done, and for several weeks he heard no more about it.

I forgot to tell you that about this time the South African War
had broken out, and as things were getting pretty tangled,
Hermann-Postlethwaite went out with his regiment, the eighth battalion,
not of the Berkshire, but of the Orkney regiment. While he was out
there, his brother, in Dr. Charlbury's home, died, and he succeeded to
the baronetcy. As he already had a V.C. and was now given a D.S.O., as
well as being one of the people mentioned in dispatches, he was pretty
important by the time he came home, when the war was over, just before
the elections of 1900.

When he got home he had a splendid welcome, both from his tenants in
Berkshire in passing through and from those of his late brother in the
big place in Worcestershire. He preferred his Berkshire place, however,
and, letting the big place to an American of the name of Hendrik K.
Boulge, he went back to his first home. When he got there he thought of
the old wood, and went out to look at it. The palings were mended, but
they were covered all over with tar! He was exceedingly angry, and
ordered them to be painted at once; but the bailiff assured him one
could not paint over tar, and so did the carpenter and the foreman. At
this he had a fit of rage, and ordered the whole damned thing to be
pulled down, and swore he would be damned if he ever had a damned stick
or a rail round the damned wood again. He was no longer young; he was
getting stout and rather puffy; he was not so reasonable as of old.
Anyhow, he had the whole thing pulled down. Next year (that is, in 1901)
his wife died.

I wish I had the space to tell you all the other things he did to the
wood. How a friend of his having sold a similar wood on the Thames in
building lots at L500 an acre, he put up the whole wood at the same
rate. How, the whole wood being 200 acres in extent, he hoped to make
L100,000 out of it. How he thought this a tidy sum. How he got no offers
at this price, nor at L100, nor at L50. How an artist offered him L20
for half an acre to put up a red tin bungalow upon. How he lost his
temper with the artist. How at last he left the whole thing alone and
tried to forget all about it.

* * * * *

The old wood to-day is just like what it was when I wandered in it as a
boy. The doctor's son is a man now