"TO BE SOLD"
First caught the eyes of Mr. Spadeley, the village clerk and sexton, as he came past the gates of the principal entrance to the park.
He stopped, stared, put on his spectacles, and read carefully again, "To be Sold." Yes, there it was and no mistake.
"Why sure the old master must be mad, and Mr. Geoffry, too," said he to himself. "To be sold, indeed! How can they? How dare they?" And the very spade in his hand seemed to share his indignation as it bounced down upon the road with a cutting remark upon the hardness of the world and its ways.
Still more disgusted was he, as he approached his own peculiar province, to find one of the obnoxious placards stuck upon the churchyard gate without his leave asked or cared for! And an assembly of village urchins spelling out the whole particulars and slowly apprehending their meaning.
"Well," said Mr. Spadeley, clerk and sexton of Falcon Range, before whom the rising generation were not wont to play pranks, but on whose countenance there was something they construed sympathetically just now.—"Well, what do you think about it?" he asked.
"Do it mean selling her house over her head?" asked a sharp-looking lad at his elbow, and pointing towards the Moat.
"Yes, that's what it means, seemingly."
"Then here goes! I say, stand out of my way, will ye?"
And, with sudden inspiration in his legs, the boy clambered up the gate-post, balanced one foot on an iron spike, and tore down the great placard in shreds. The little rabble shouted and jumped about with energy and triumph, and dared some other presumptuous feats before Mr. Spadeley's eyes, while instead of clutching the hero by the hair, as had happened more than once, the sexton only patted him on the shoulder, quietly dropped a halfpenny into his dirty cap, and edged himself out of the noisy demonstration.