“Why, you look very healthy, sir? You are not ill?”
“No, no, my man; I do not mean to give you a chance of getting another guinea by me, at least for the present. I only meant to say my stay in this village would not be for long. But where do these poor people live?”
“Not in the same place they used to do in the days of their prosperity and respectability. Their house now stands at the corner of the heath, sir: shall I go with you and show it you?”
“I can find it; there are not many cottages there. Do you go and pay the bill at the shop; and then if you have a mind to bring the receipt, instead of giving me the trouble to call at your house for it, you will find me at the cottage of these poor people; and hear me, old man, do not talk to any one about this matter. You may as well bring a receipt, also, for your own work at the same time.”
“You are quite a man of business, I see, sir. I will not fail to be at the cottage this very evening with a receipt in full.”
The old sexton placed the guinea carefully at the bottom of his pocket, and, shouldering his spade and mattock, marched off towards the village shop. The stranger walked round Nacton churchyard. He stood sometime attentively reading the inscription upon Admiral Vernon’s mausoleum; and, taking another look at the humble, new-made grave of Margaret Catchpole’s mother, he took the highroad to the heath, and saw the cottage, known by the name of the Shepherd’s Cot, at the verge of that wild waste.
Meantime the following conversation was going on in that cottage:—
“I wonder,” said Margaret to her father, as the old man sat by the log-fire in the chimney-corner, “whether our brother Charles is alive or dead?”
“I can just remember him,” said the boy; “he used to be very fond of me, and said I should make a good soldier.”