he walked to Rochester and bought some old bureaux, and
chairs, and book-cases, a few Persian rugs and some brass things,
unpacked his books and settled down to the hermit's life to which he had
vowed himself. The woman came every morning from her cottage a mile
away, and left at noon. He got his meals himself--always chops, or
steaks, or eggs--and presently began to grow accustomed to the place.
When the sun shone it was not so bad. He could make no way against the
thorns and thistles on his five acres, and they quickly grew into a very
wilderness. But a wilderness is pleasant to wander in; and a few flowers
had survived long neglect, and here and there put out red, or white, or
yellow buds. And he worked away at his book about Greek poetry.

He almost believed that he was contented; he had never cared for people
so much as for books, and now he saw no people, and his books began to
crowd his shelves. No one passed by "The Yews"--so called, he imagined,
in extravagant compliment to the decaying cypress--for it stood by a
grass-grown by-way that had once connected two main roads, each a couple
of miles distant. These were now joined by a better road down in the
valley, and no one came past Maurice's window save the milk, the bread,
the butcher, and the postman.

Summer turned brown and dry and became autumn, autumn turned wet and
chilly and grew into winter, and all the winds of heaven blew cold and
damp through the cracks of the ill-built house.

Maurice was glad when the spring came; he had taken the house for three
years, and he was a careful man, and also, in his way, a determined. Yet
it was good to look out once more on something green, and to see
sunshine and a warm sky; it was near Easter now. In all these ten months
nothing whatever had happened to him. He had never been beyond his five
acres--and no one had been to see him. He had no relations, and friends
soon forget; besides, after all, friends, unlike relations, cannot go
where they are not invited.

It was on the Saturday before Easter that the quarryside fell in.
Maurice was working in his study when he heard a sudden crack and a
slow, splitting sound, and then a long, loud, rumbling noise, like
thunder, that echoed and re-echoed from the hills on each side. And,
looking from his window, he saw the cloud of white dust rise high above
the edge of the old quarry, and seem to drift off to join the
cotton-wool clouds in the blue sky.

"I suppose it's al