er dinner, "Cobbler" Horn set out with his agent on a tour of
inspection through the village.

"We'll take this row first, sir, if you please," said Mr. Gray. "One of
the people has sent for me to call."

So saying he led the way towards a row of decrepit cottages which, with
their dingy walls and black thatch, looked like a group of fungi, rather
than a row of habitations erected by the hand of man.

At the crazy door of the first cottage they were confronted by a stout,
red-faced woman with bare beefy arms, who, on seeing "Cobbler" Horn,
dropped a curtsey, and suppressed the angry salutation which she had
prepared for Mr. Gray.

"A friend of mine, Mrs. Blobs," said the agent.

"Glad to see you, sir," said the woman to "Cobbler" Horn. "Will you please
to walk in, gentlemen."

"Just cast your eye up there, Mr. Gray," she added when they were inside.
"It's come through at last."

Sure enough it had. Above their heads was a vast hole in the ceiling, and
above that a huge gap in the thatch; and at their feet lay a heap of
bricks, mortar, and fragments of rotten wood.

"Why the chimney has come through!" exclaimed Mr. Gray.

"Little doubt of that," said Mrs. Blobs.

"Was anybody hurt?"

"No, but they might ha' bin. It was this very morning. The master was at
his work, and the children away at school; but, if I hadn't just stepped
out to have a few words with a neighbour, I might ha' bin just under the
very place. Isn't it disgraceful, sir," she added, turning to "Cobbler"
Horn, "that human beings should be made to live in such tumbledown places?
I believe Mr. Gray, here, would have put things right long ago; but he's
been kept that tight by the old skin-flint what's just died. They do say
as now the property have got into better hands; but----"

"Well, well, Mrs. Blobs" interposed the agent; "we shall soon see a change
now I hope."

"Yes," assented "Cobbler" Horn, "we'll have----that is, I'm sure Mr. Gray
will soon make you snug, ma'am."

"We must call at every house, sir," said Mr. Gray, as they passed to the
next door. "There isn't one of the lot but wants patching up almost every
day."

"Cheer up, Mr. Gray," said "the Golden Shoemaker." "There shall be no more
patching after this."

In each of the miserable cottages they met with a repetition of their
experience in the first. If the reproaches of the living could bring back
the dead, old Jacob Horn should have formed one of the group in those
mouldy