ne of us?"

"Yes!" says her ladyship, decisive on reflection. "I had forgotten about
old Stephen. But _I_ can go to him. You go back!... Yes, dear, you had
better go back.... What?"

"I am not going back. I want to see the body--this man's body. I want to
see his face.... No; I am not a child, mamma. Let me have my way."

"If you must, darling, you must. But I cannot see what use it can be.
See--here is Aunt Constance! _She_ does not want to see it...." A
confirmatory head-shake from Miss Dickenson. "Why should _you_?"

"Aunt Constance never spoke to him. I did. And he spoke to me. Let me
go, mamma dear. Don't oppose me." Indeed, the girl seems almost
feverishly anxious, quite on a sudden, to have this wish. No need for
her mother to accompany her, she adds. To which her mother replies:--"I
would if you wished it, dear Gwen"; whereupon Aunt Constance, perceiving
in her heart an opportunity for public service tending to distinction,
says so would she. Further, in view of a verdict from somebody somewhere
later on, that she showed a very nice feeling on this occasion, she
takes an opportunity before they reach the cottage to say to Lady
Gwendolen in an important aside:--"You won't let your mother go into the
room, dear. Anything of this sort tells so on her system." To which the
reply is rather abrupt:--"You needn't come, either of you." So that is
settled.

The body had not been carried into a room of the cottage, but into what
goes by the name of the Verderer's Hall, some fifty yards off. That much
carriage was spared by doing so. It now lies on the "Lord's table," so
called not from any reference to sacramental usage, but because the Lord
of the Manor sat at it on the occasions of the Manorial Courts. Three
centuries have passed since the last Court Baron; the last landlord who
sat in real council with his tenantry under its roof having been Roger
Earl of Ancester, who was killed in the Civil War. But old customs die
hard, and every Michaelmas Day--except it fall on a Sunday--the Earl or
his Steward at twelve o'clock receives from the person who enjoys a
right of free-warren over certain acres that have long since harboured
neither hare nor rabbit, an annual tribute which a chronicle as old as
Chaucer speaks of as "iiij tusshes of a wild bore." If no boars' tusks
are forthcoming, he has to be content with some equivalent devised to
meet their scarcity nowadays. Otherwise, the old Hall grows to be more
and more a m