t, and that those that lived would see her son
as respected as any man in the parish; he shouldn't be surprised,
indeed, if he were church-warden before he died. And then,
astonished at his own boldness, and feeling that he was not
capable of any higher flight of imagination, the constable rose
to take his leave. He asked where Harry was working, and, finding
that he was at mowing in the Danes' Close, set off to look after
him. The kind-hearted constable could not shake off the feeling
that something was going to happen to Harry which would get him
into trouble, and he wanted to assure himself that as yet nothing
had gone wrong. Whenever one has this sort of vague feeling about
a friend, there is a natural and irresistible impulse to go and
look after him, and to be with him.

The Danes' Close was a part of the glebe, a large field of some
ten acres or so in extent, close to the village. Two footpaths
ran across it, so that it was almost common property, and the
village children considered it as much their playground as the
green itself. They trampled the grass a good deal more than
seemed endurable in the eyes of Simon, who managed the rector's
farming operations as well as the garden; but the children had
their own way, notwithstanding the threats he sometimes launched
at them. Miss Winter would have sooner lost all the hay than have
narrowed their amusements. It was the most difficult piece of
mowing in the parish, in consequence of the tramplings and of the
large crops it bore. The Danes, or some other unknown persons,
had made the land fat, perhaps with their carcasses, and the
benefit had lasted to the time of our story. At any rate, the
field bore splendid crops, and the mowers always got an extra
shilling an acre for cutting it, by Miss Winter's special order,
which was paid by Simon in the most ungracious manner, and with
many grumblings that it was enough to ruin all the mowers in the
countryside.

As the constable got over the stile into the hay-field, a great
part of his misgivings passed out of his head. He was a simple
kindly man, whose heart lay open to all influences of scene and
weather, and the Danes' Close, full of life and joy and merry
sounds, as seen under the slanting rays of the evening sun, was
just the place to rub all the wrinkles out of him.

The constable, however, is not singular in this matter. What man
amongst us all, if he will think the matter over calmly and
fairly, can honestly