not of them--a man alone and apart,
respected by all but loved by none.

Finally he died and was buried with the others, and one more memorial
with the old name, which he bore last was placed on the wall. That
was the story as it was told me, and as it was all about a man who was
without charm and had no love interest it did not greatly interest me,
and I soon dismissed it from my thoughts. Then one day coming through a
grove in the park and finding myself standing before the ancient, empty,
desolate house--for on the squire's death everything had been sold and
taken away--I remembered that the caretaker had begged me to let him
show me over the place. I had not felt inclined to gratify him, as I
had found him a young man of a too active mind whose only desire was
to capture some person to talk to and unfold his original ideas and
schemes, but now having come to the house I thought I would suffer him,
and soon found him at work in the vast old walled garden. He joyfully
threw down his spade and let me in and then up to the top floor,
determined that I should see everything. By the time we got down to
the ground floor I was pretty tired of empty rooms, oak panelled, and
passages and oak staircases, and of talk, and impatient to get away. But
no, I had not seen the housekeeper's room--I must see that!--and so
into another great vacant room I was dragged, and to keep me as long as
possible in that last room he began unlocking and flinging open all the
old oak cupboards and presses. Glancing round at the long array of empty
shelves, I noticed a small brown-paper parcel, thick with dust, in a
corner, and as it was the only movable thing I had seen in that vacant
house I asked him what the parcel contained. Books, he replied--they had
been left as of no value when the house was cleared of furniture. As I
wished to see the books he undid the parcel; it contained forty copies
of a small quarto-shaped book of sonnets, with the late squire's name as
author on the title page. I read a sonnet, and told him I should like to
read them all. "You can have a copy, of course," he exclaimed. "Put it
in your pocket and keep it." When I asked him if he had any right to
give one away he laughed and said that if any one had thought the whole
parcel worth twopence it would not have been left behind. He was quite
right; a cracked dinner--plate or a saucepan with a hole in it or an
earthenware teapot with a broken spout would not have been left,