ng to
haunt the Common there will be no peace or decency," was the idea that
presented itself. "I must send him off, the brute," was the corollary.
But I disliked the thought of being obliged to drive him away.

VI

The next morning I did not go on the Common; I was anxious to avoid a
meeting with the Harrison idiot. I had been debating whether I should
drive him away if I met him. Obviously I had no more right on the Common
than he had--on the other hand, he was a nuisance, and I did not see why
I should allow him to spoil all my pleasure in that ideal stretch of
wild land which pressed on three sides of the Wood Farm. It was a stupid
quandary of my own making; but I am afraid it was rather typical of my
mental attitude. I am prone to set myself tasks, such as this eviction
of the idiot from common ground, and equally prone to avoid them by a
process of procrastination.

By way of evasion I walked over to Deane Hill and surveyed the wonderful
panorama of neat country that fills the basin between the Hampden and
the Quainton Hills. Seen from that height, it has something the effect
of a Dutch landscape, it all looks so amazingly tidy. Away to the left I
looked over Stoke-Underhill. Ailesworth was a blur in the hollow, but I
could distinguish the high fence of the County Ground.

I sat all the morning on Deane Hill, musing and smoking, thinking of
such things as Ginger Stott, and the match with Surrey. I decided that I
must certainly go and see Stott's queer son, the phenomenon who had,
they say, read all the books in Mr. Challis's library. I wondered what
sort of a library this Challis had, and who he was. I had never heard of
him before. I think I must have gone to sleep for a time.

When Mrs. Berridge came to clear away my dinner--I dined, without shame,
at half-past twelve--I detained her with conversation. Presently I asked
about little Stott.

"He's a queer one, that's what he is," said Mrs. Berridge. She was a
neat, comely little woman, rather superior to her station, and it seemed
to me, certainly superior to her clod of a husband.

"A great reader, Farmer Bates tells me," I said.

Mrs. Berridge passed that by. "His mother's in trouble about him this
morning," she said. "She's such a nice, respectable woman, and has all
her milk and eggs and butter off of us. She was here this morning while
you were out, sir, and, what I could make of it that 'Arrison boy had
been chasing her boy on the Common last nig