s at the leafless oaks of the park, at the grey sky and the
driving rain and he wished something would happen. He wished somebody
might die and leave a great library to be sold, that he might indulge
his favourite passion; he wished he had somebody stopping in the Hall--he
almost decided to send and ask the vicar to come to lunch and have a day
among the books. As he entered the breakfast-room at precisely half-past
eight o'clock, according to his wont, the butler informed him that Mr.
Gall, the village constable, was below and wanted to see him after
breakfast. He received the news in silence and sat down to eat his
breakfast and read the morning paper. Gall had probably come about some
petty summons, or to ask what he should do about the small boys who threw
stones at the rooks and broke the church windows. After finishing his
meal and his paper in the leisurely manner peculiar to country gentlemen
who have nothing to do, the squire rang the bell, sent for the policeman
and went into his study, a small room adjoining the library.

Thomas Gall, constable, was a tall fair man with a mild eye and a
cheerful face. Goodwill towards men and plentiful good living had done
their work in eradicating from the good man all that stern element which
might have been most useful to him in his career, not to say useful to
the State. Each rolling year was pricked in his leathern belt with a new
hole as his heart grew more peaceful and his body throve. He had a goodly
girth and weighed full fifteen stone in his uniform; his mild blue eye
had inspired confidence in a maiden of Billingsfield parish and Mrs. Gall
was now rearing a numerous family of little Galls, all perhaps destined
to become mild-eyed and portly village constables in their turn.

The squire, who was not destitute of a sense of humour, never thought of
Mr. Gall without a smile, so much out of keeping did the man's occupation
seem with his jovial humour. Mr. Gall, he said, was the kind of policeman
who would bribe a refractory tramp to move on by the present of a pint of
beer. But Gall had a good point. He was very proud of his profession, and
in the exercise of it he showed a discretion which, if it was the better
part of his valour, argued unlimited natural courage. It was a secret
profession, he was wont to say, and a man who could not keep a secret
would never do for a constable. He shrouded his ways in an amiable
mystery and walked a solitary beat on fine nights; when