narrowness of the cellar and the smeary effect of its
numerous cobwebs upon best clothes.

Some of the guests then spoke of Fess Derriman as not such a bad young
man if you took him right and humoured him; others said that he was
nobody's enemy but his own; and the elder ladies mentioned in a tone of
interest that he was likely to come into a deal of money at his uncle's
death. The person who did not praise was the one who knew him best, who
had known him as a boy years ago, when he had lived nearer to Overcombe
than he did at present. This unappreciative person was the
trumpet-major.

VI. OLD MR. DERRIMAN OF OXWELL HALL

At this time in the history of Overcombe one solitary newspaper
occasionally found its way into the village. It was lent by the
postmaster at Budmouth (who, in some mysterious way, got it for nothing
through his connexion with the mail) to Mr. Derriman at the Hall, by whom
it was handed on to Mrs. Garland when it was not more than a fortnight
old. Whoever remembers anything about the old farmer-squire will, of
course, know well enough that this delightful privilege of reading
history in long columns was not accorded to the Widow Garland for
nothing. It was by such ingenuous means that he paid her for her
daughter's occasional services in reading aloud to him and making out his
accounts, in which matters the farmer, whose guineas were reported to
touch five figures--some said more--was not expert.

Mrs. Martha Garland, as a respectable widow, occupied a twilight rank
between the benighted villagers and the well-informed gentry, and kindly
made herself useful to the former as letter-writer and reader, and
general translator from the printing tongue. It was not without
satisfaction that she stood at her door of an evening, newspaper in hand,
with three or four cottagers standing round, and poured down their open
throats any paragraph that she might choose to select from the stirring
ones of the period. When she had done with the sheet Mrs. Garland passed
it on to the miller, the miller to the grinder, and the grinder to the
grinder's boy, in whose hands it became subdivided into half pages,
quarter pages, and irregular triangles, and ended its career as a paper
cap, a flagon bung, or a wrapper for his bread and cheese.

Notwithstanding his compact with Mrs. Garland, old Mr. Derriman kept the
paper so long, and was so chary of wasting his man's time on a merely
intellectual errand, th