over the numerous jobs the gentry’s stables, carriage houses, garden tools, and household repairs give to him.  The carpenter mends and makes, the vicarage feels at ease, realising that its church and its charities do not stand unsupported.  Small farmers and larger ones, under a rich and interested landlord, thrive and are able to hold their own even against the tricks of wind and weather.  Farm labourers being, as a result, certain of steady and decent wage, trudge to and fro, with stolid cheerfulness, knowing that the pot boils and the children’s feet are shod.  Superannuated old men and women are sure of their broth and Sunday dinner, and their dread of the impending “Union” fades away.  The squire or my lord or my lady can be depended upon to care for their old bones until they are laid under the sod in the green churchyard.  With wealth and good will at the Great House, life warms and offers prospects.  There are Christmas feasts and gifts and village treats, and the big carriage or the smaller ones stop at cottage doors and at once confer exciting distinction and carry good cheer.

But Stornham village had scarcely a remote memory of any period of such prosperity.  It had not existed even in the older Sir Nigel’s time, and certainly the present Sir Nigel’s reign had been marked only by neglect, ill-temper, indifference, and a falling into disorder and decay.  Farms were poorly worked, labourers were unemployed, there was no trade from the manor household, no carriages, no horses, no company, no spending of money.  Cottages leaked, floors were damp, the church roof itself was falling to pieces, and the vicar had nothing to give.  The helpless and old cottagers were carried to the “Union” and, dying there, were buried by the stinted parish in parish coffins.

Her ladyship had not visited the cottages since her child’s birth.  And now such inspiriting events as were everyday happenings in lucky places like Westerbridge and Wratcham and Yangford, showed signs of being about to occur in Stornham itself.

To begin with, even before the journey to London, Kedgers had made two or three visits to The Clock, and had been in a communicative mood.  He had related the story of the morning when he had looked up from his work and had found the strange young lady standing before him, with the result that he had been “struck all of a heap.”  And then he had given a detailed account of their walk round the place, and of the way in which she had looked at things and asked questions, such as would have done credit to a man “with a ’ead on ’im.”

“Nay!  Nay!” commented Kedgers, shaking his own head doubtfully, even while with admiration.  “I’ve never seen the like before—­in young women—­neither in lady young women nor in them that’s otherwise.”

Afterwards had transpired the story of Mrs. Noakes, and the kitchen grate, Mrs. Noakes having a friend in Miss Lupin, the village dressmaker.

“I’d not put it past her,” was Mrs. Noakes’ summing up, “to order a new one, I wouldn’t.”