on to-day both going and returning; but
there was a thick mist on the way back, and I was not in trim for
wandering about unknown pastures, especially on an evening when bushes
looked like men, and a cow lowing in the distance might have been the
last trump. I assure you, if Uncle Henry had stepped out from among
the trees in a little copse which borders the path at one place,
carrying his head under his arm, I should have been very little more
uncomfortable than I was. To tell you the truth, I was rather
expecting something of the kind. But I must drop my pen for the
moment: Mr. Lucas, the curate, is announced.

_Later._ Mr. Lucas has been, and gone, and there is not much beyond
the decencies of ordinary sentiment to be got from him. I can see that
he has given up any idea that the Rector can be alive, and that, so
far as he can be, he is truly sorry. I can also discern that even in a
more emotional person than Mr. Lucas, Uncle Henry was not likely to
inspire strong attachment.

Besides Mr. Lucas, I have had another visitor in the shape of my
Boniface--mine host of the "King's Head"--who came to see whether I
had everything I wished, and who really requires the pen of a Boz to
do him justice. He was very solemn and weighty at first. "Well, sir,"
he said, "I suppose we must bow our 'ead beneath the blow, as my poor
wife had used to say. So far as I can gather there's been neither
hide nor yet hair of our late respected incumbent scented out as yet;
not that he was what the Scripture terms a hairy man in any sense of
the word."

I said--as well as I could--that I supposed not, but could not help
adding that I had heard he was sometimes a little difficult to deal
with. Mr. Bowman looked at me sharply for a moment, and then passed in
a flash from solemn sympathy to impassioned declamation. "When I
think," he said, "of the language that man see fit to employ to me in
this here parlour over no more a matter than a cask of beer--such a
thing as I told him might happen any day of the week to a man with a
family--though as it turned out he was quite under a mistake, and that
I knew at the time, only I was that shocked to hear him I couldn't lay
my tongue to the right expression."

He stopped abruptly and eyed me with some embarrassment. I only said,
"Dear me, I'm sorry to hear you had any little differences; I suppose
my uncle will be a good deal missed in the parish?" Mr. Bowman drew a
long breath. "Ah, yes!" he said; "yo