g story my
companion had to tell.

We had mentioned the lord of the manor as we crossed the common, and
the notice-board brought him once more to the old man's mind.

"Poor gentleman!" he said, pointing to the board as though it was the
lord of the manor himself standing there, "I shouldn't like to have had
the trouble he's had on my shoulders."

"Indeed?" I said interrogatively.

"Well, you see, sir," he continued, instinctively lowering his voice to
a confidential impressiveness, "he married an actress; a noble lady too
she was, a fine dashing merry lady as ever you saw. All went well for
a time, and then it suddenly got whispered about that she and the
village schoolmaster were meeting each other at nights, in the
meadow-bottom at the end of her own park. It lies over that way,--I
could take you to the very place. The schoolmaster was a noble-looking
young man too, a devil-me-care blade of a fellow, with a turn for
poetry, they said, and a merry man too, and much in request for a song
at The Moonrakers of an evening. Many 's the night I've heard the
windows rattling with the good company gathered round him. Yes, he was
a noble-looking man, a noble-looking man," he repeated wistfully, and
with an evident sympathy for the lovers which, I need hardly say, won
my heart.

"But how, I wonder, did they come to know each other?" I interrupted,
anxious to learn all I could, even if I had to ask stupid questions to
learn it.

"Well, of course, no one can say how these things come about. She was
the lady of the manor and the patroness of his school; and then, as I
say, he was a very noble-looking man, and probably took her fancy; and,
sir, whenever some women set their hearts on a man there's no stopping
them. Have him they will, whatever happens. They can't help it, poor
things! It's just a freak of nature."

"Well, and how was it found out?" I again jogged him.

"One of Sir William's keepers played the spy on them. He spread it all
over the place how he had seen them on moonlight nights sitting
together in the dingle, drinking champagne, and laughing and talking as
merry as you please; and, of course, it came in time to Sir William--"

"You see that green lane there," he broke off, pointing to a romantic
path winding along the heath side; "it was along there he used to go of
a night to meet her after every one was in bed; and when it all came
out there was a regular cartload of bottles found there. The squir