On the keystone of the porch was chiselled Anno 15—; the other figures effaced, but cut some time in the century that saw the Armada. A vast, rambling, many-gabled, red-tiled building, with vines and cherries trained against the grey walls, and honeysuckle creeping about the porch. The steep Downs rose behind, barely a gunshot distant; from Andrew’s window there was an open view of the vale. The pool almost surrounded the garden—part moat, part fishpond, part mill-pool—and was crossed by a wooden bridge. There the moorhens swam and threw up their white-marked tails as they thrust their beaks under water; the timid dab-chick, which no familiarity with man can reassure, dived at the faintest footstep; the pike basked in the sunshine warming his cold blood, and the sturdy perch with tremulous tail faced the slow stream. By the stones of the sluice dark-green ferns flourished exceedingly. The sheep crept along the steep coombe-side cropping the short sweet grass; the shepherd sat on the edge and cut his own and his sweetheart’s name in the turf. Time was when Andrew could run up the hill there light as a hare. Now his slow walk, hard bearing on blackthorn staff, in summer went no farther than the green before the porch, where the sundial stood with the motto on its brazen face, bidding men to number none but the happy hours, and to forget the dark and shadowy—a bitter mockery at fourscore and ten. In winter he crept twice or thrice a day across the courtyard to the barn, where, despite steam, he kept three old men at work on the threshing-floor—not for charity, but because he liked to listen to the knock-knock of the flails.
Ever round and round, without haste and without rest, went the massive wheel in the mill—ceaseless as the revolving firmament—to the clack of the noisy hopper and creak of the iron gudgeons, and the flousing splash of the mill-race. Hard as his own nether millstone was the heart of Andrew Fisher: does time soften the gnarled stem of the oak?
So he sat by the open window in his beehive chair that summer afternoon drowsily listening to the mill. In the window was the escutcheon of his family in coloured glass, and the name “Fischere” in old-fashioned letters. Fishere of the Warren was fined one hundred pounds as a noted malignant in the days of fear and trembling that followed Worcester fight.
The shadow stole forward on the dial, and there came the dull hollow sound of horse’s hoofs passing over the wooden bridge. Presently Jane the housekeeper, who, by virtue of her necessity to him in his infirmities, used no ceremony nor courtesy of speech, came in.
“There be a paason wants to see thee,” said she.
No answer.
“Dost hear?”
A grunt.
“Wake up!”—shaking him.
He struck at her with his blackthorn that ever lay between his knees.