How they subsisted was a mystery. In the autumn they were in the habit of picking up bits of broken branches and carrying them into the house, presumably to serve in lieu of coals when winter came on. Both of them were bent nearly double with old age and rheumatism. Occasionally they would be seen sitting on a log, very close to each other, with a little pile of stones before them, which they shied with weak and trembling hands at a rabbit or a bird, or at shadows which they mistook for living creatures. They never by any chance hit anything they aimed at, and they did not even succeed in frightening the birds or the rabbits, which darted hither and thither and hopped about quite near to them in the most unconcerned fashion. During the latter years of their tenancy one or other of the old people would sometimes be seen, when the weather was fine, creeping out of Parksides and out of Beddington, starting early in the morning and returning late at night. On these occasions it was observed that they carried a parcel, which without further evidence it was decided was something abstracted from the mansion, which they were travelling to a distance to sell, in order to obtain food; and it was also decided that they did not dispose of these articles in the immediate neighbourhood of Beddington, lest they should be accused of theft. If this were really the case, the old couple might have dismissed their fears; the difficulty of finding a prosecutor would have been insurmountable; and as to portable property of a sufficiently small size to be tied up in a pocket-handkerchief, there was little enough of that in the mansion. All that was valuable and of easy carriage had long since been seized and sold, lawfully or unlawfully. The ruin of Parksides was not a grand crash, in the thunder of which lightning-flashes of old glories made themselves visible; it was a long and mean decline, made up of piecemeal borrowings and bit-by-bit sales; of filchings and small robberies, a few feathers by this sharp rogue, a few feathers by that, from the plumage of the birds that were once the pride of the country. There was certainly plenty of old furniture in the house, which had been allowed to remain, probably because it was heavy and cumbersome and falling to pieces—bedsteads, tables, chairs, benches and sideboards, quaintly and curiously carved; rich tapestries too, mostly worn to shreds, and rotted by age and neglect, in which old stories had been woven by fair hands. They and the gallant deeds they recorded were now on an equality; the reflected radiance of stately seasons of honourable life and dignified labour was utterly and for ever dead, leaving no soul behind; the story was told, and flesh and silk were little better than dust. There were not any pictures in frames in the rooms; but there were paintings on the wall panels, so faded now and colourless that the learning of an antiquary were needed to describe them.
Amidst these ancient surroundings the last of the care-takers, old Mr. and Mrs. Barley, moved and starved. One can imagine them creeping up the wide staircases, and tottering about the rooms, living ghosts, clinging to each other for support (they were both past seventy, and chronically weak from want of proper nourishment), wondering whether they had not reached the dead world upon the brink of which they stood. There came a hard winter, and a fall of snow which lasted intermittently, but pretty steadily, nevertheless, for a full fort-night. It was during this winter that an incident occurred in the career of the last of the care-takers.
Said a gossip to a kindred heart, trudging through the snow at least a hundred yards for the purpose, "My man, coming home from work last night, passed the gates of Parksides."
"He does always, doesn't he?" was the response, evincing in the querist an ungracious spirit, for Gossip Number Two was aware that her neighbour had not walked ankle-deep in the coldest of carpets to impart this information.
"Yes, he does always, when he doesn't go another way."
"What other way?"
"The way of the Hog in the Pound." (For comprehension to uninformed minds, a public-house.)
"That's the way he likes best," observed Gossip Number Two, still with the ungracious spirit upon her.
"You needn't boast," said Gossip Number One; "your man leaves half his wages there."
"Yes; worse luck! But what about Parksides?"