, after the work was over, he could keep perfectly well.

I was never hungrier than on this evening, and never, I think, ate a
bigger or more enjoyable meal; nor have I ever ceased to remember those
two with gratitude, and if I were to tell here what they told me--the
history of their two lives--I think it would be a more interesting
story than the one I am about to relate. I stayed a whole week in their
hospitable house; a week which passed only too quickly, for never had
I been in a sweeter haunt of peace than this village in a quiet, green
country remote from towns and stations. It was a small rustic place, a
few old houses and thatched cottages, and the ancient church with square
Norman tower hard to see amid the immense old oaks and elms that grew
all about it. At the end of the village were the park gates, and the
park, a solitary, green place with noble trees, was my favourite haunt;
for there was no one to forbid me, the squire being dead, the old red
Elizabethan house empty, with only a caretaker in the gardener's lodge
to mind it, and the estate for sale. Three years it had been in that
condition, but nobody seemed to want it; occasionally some important
person came rushing down in a motor-car, but after running over the
house he would come out and, remarking that it was a "rummy old place,"
remount his car and vanish in a cloud of dust to be seen no more.

The dead owner, I found, was much in the village mind; and no wonder,
since Norton had never been without a squire until he passed away,
leaving no one to succeed him. It was as if some ancient landmark, or an
immemorial oak tree on the green in whose shade the villagers had been
accustomed to sit for many generations, had been removed. There was a
sense of something wanting something gone out of their lives. Moreover,
he had been a man of a remarkable character, and though they never loved
him they yet reverenced his memory.

So much was he in their minds that I could not be in the village and not
hear the story of his life--the story which, I said, interested me less
than that of the good baker and his wife. On his father's death at a
very advanced age he came, a comparative stranger, to Norton, the first
half of his life having been spent abroad. He was then a middle-aged
man, unmarried, and a bachelor he remained to the end. He was of a
reticent disposition and was said to be proud; formal, almost cold, in
manner; furthermore, he did not share his neig