st. Invariably, also, the vicar threatened that in future
the mare should be shod by Hawkins the rival blacksmith, who was a
dissenter and had consequently never been employed by the vicarage.
Moreover it was generally rumoured once every year that old Nat Barker,
the octogenarian cripple who had not been able to stand upon his feet for
twenty years, was at the point of death. He invariably recovered,
however, in time to put in an appearance by proxy at the distribution of
a certain dole of a loaf and a shilling on boxing day. It was told also
that in remote times the Puckeridge hounds had once come that way and
that the fox had got into the churchyard. A repetition of this stirring
event was anxiously looked for during many years, every time that the
said pack met within ten miles of Billingsfield, but hitherto it had been
looked for in vain. On the whole the life at the vicarage was not
eventful, and the studies of the two young men who imbibed learning at
the feet of the Reverend Augustin Ambrose were rarely interrupted.

Mrs. Ambrose herself represented the feminine element in the society of
the little place. The new doctor was a strange man, suspected of being a
free-thinker, and he was not married. The Hall, for there was a Hall at
Billingsfield, was uninhabited, and had been uninhabited for years. The
estate which belonged to it was unimportant and moreover was in Chancery
and seemed likely to stay there, for reasons no one ever mentioned at
Billingsfield, because no one knew anything about them. From time to time
a legal looking personage drove up to the Duke's Head, which was kept by
Mr. Abraham Boosey, who was also undertaker to the parish, and which was
thought to be a very good inn. The legal personage stayed a day or two,
spending most of his time at the Hall and in driving about to the
scattered farms which represented the estate, but he never came to the
vicarage, nor did the vicar ever seem to know what he was doing nor why
he came. "He came on business"--that was all that anybody knew. His
business was to collect rents, of course; but what he did with them, no
one was bold enough to surmise. The estate was in Chancery, it was said,
and the definition conveyed about as much to the mind of the average
inhabitant of Billingsfield, as if he had been informed that the moon was
in perigee or the sun in Scorpio. The practical result of its being in
Chancery was that no one lived there.

John Short liked Mrs. A