To Hogarth the whole, so familiar, looked uplifted now, the sunlight of a more celestial essence. Westring he would buy—though one memorable night in Colmoor he had arrived at the knowledge that it was not just that Westring should be anyone's; but then what one bought with his own diamonds was surely his own—his name being Richard.
He had passed the bridge, when, glancing to the left, he saw a fifth person in the landscape—a man under a sycamore near the church, gazing up, with hung jaw, at the apse window—dressed in a grey jacket, but a clerical hat, and he had a note-book, in which he wrote, or drew. Hogarth, whose mind was in weathercock state, rolled the barrow to the hill, left it, went stealing fleetly up, and gripped the man's collar, to whisper: “In the King's name I arrest you”.
The man's hand clapped his heart, as he turned a face of terror.
“There is—some mistake—My God! Are you—?”
“Yes”.
“Hogarth?”
“Who else?”
“But you have killed me! My heart—”
“Serves you right. Why didn't you give your right name to Loveday? And what are you doing here?”
“I was just examining this lovely old church, with its two south aisles, and one north, like St. John's at Cirencester. When the church fell in England, architecture was abolished—But as to why I am in Norfolk at all, I am skulking: and here is as another place. Your friend packed me off to America; but for some reasons I should prefer Golmoor—old Colmoor, eh? I fear I am a voluptuary, my son, fond of comfort, and old things, and pretty things. And all that I shall have yet! Tut, O'Hara is not done with the world, nor it with him. As to Norfolk, I once knew—a person—in this neighbourhood—”