ndows; the result of such solicitude for the comfort of the
inmates was a succession of blank spaces of freestone that delighted
the eye with an effect of strength and leisure, of cleanliness and
tranquillity.

The Rectory, dating from the reign of Charles II, did not arrogate to
itself the right to retire behind trees from the long line of the single
village street; but being taller than the other houses it brought the
street to a dignified conclusion, and it was not unworthy of the noble
church which stood apart from the village, a landmark for miles, upon
the brow of the rolling wold. There was little traffic on the road that
climbed up from Wychford in the valley of the swift Greenrush five miles
away, and there was less traffic on the road beyond, which for eight
miles sent branch after branch to remote farms and hamlets until itself
became no more than a sheep track and faded out upon a hilly pasturage.
Yet even this unfrequented road only bisected the village at the end of
its wide street, where in the morning when the children were at school
and the labourers at work in the fields the silence was cloistral, where
one could stand listening to the larks high overhead, and where the
lightest footstep aroused curiosity, so that one turned the head to peep
and peer for the cause of so strange a sound.

Mr. Ogilvie's parish had a large superficial area; but his parishioners
were not many outside the village, and in that country of wide pastures
the whole of his cure did not include half-a-dozen farms. There was no
doctor and no squire, unless Will Starling of Rushbrooke Grange could be
counted as the squire.

Halfway to Wychford and close to the boundary of the two parishes an
infirm signpost managed with the aid of a stunted hawthorn to keep
itself partially upright and direct the wayfarer to Wych Maries. Without
the signpost nobody would have suspected that the grassgrown track thus
indicated led anywhere except over the top of the wold.

"You must go and explore Wych Maries," the Rector had said to Mark soon
after they arrived. "You'll find it rather attractive. There's a disused
chapel dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin and St. Mary Magdalene. My
predecessor took me there when we drove round the parish on my first
visit; but I haven't yet had time to go again. And you ought to have a
look at the gardens of Rushbrooke Grange. The present squire is away. In
the South Seas, I believe. But the housekeeper, Mrs. Honey