‘I don’t know,’ I answered, truly enough. I seemed to myself to be talking sense, that was all.
‘Well, I do. What do you mean by saying he couldn’t keep it?’
‘It’s been a good many people’s already, and it’ll be somebody else’s some day,’ I replied.
He did not seem to relish the suggestion, for he gave a kind of grunt, which gradually broke into a laugh as he answered,
‘Likely enough! likely enough!’
We had now come round to the end of the bridge, and I saw that it was far more curious than I had perceived before.
‘Why is it so narrow?’ I asked, wonderingly, for it was not three feet wide, and had a parapet of stone about three feet high on each side of it.
‘Ah!’ he replied, ‘that’s it, you see. As old as the hills. It was built, this bridge was, before ever a carriage was made—yes, before ever a carrier’s cart went along a road. They carried everything then upon horses’ backs. They call this the pack-horse bridge. You see there’s room for the horses’ legs, and their loads could stick out over the parapets. That’s the way they carried everything to the Hall then. That was a few years before you were born, young gentleman.’
‘But they couldn’t get their legs—the horses, I mean—couldn’t get their legs through this narrow opening,’ I objected; for a flat stone almost blocked up each end.
‘No; that’s true enough. But those stones have been up only a hundred years or so. They didn’t want it for pack-horses any more then, and the stones were put up to keep the cattle, with which at some time or other I suppose some thrifty owner had stocked the park, from crossing to this meadow. That would be before those trees were planted up there.’