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.
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