’So do I. By-the-bye, can you tell me anything about a queer-looking old man I passed just now a little higher up the Fell?  Such an old, old man, with long white hair.’

‘Yes, sir.  I believe I know him.’

‘Who is he?  Does he live in Grasmere?’

Steadman looked puzzled.

’Well, you see, sir, your description might apply to a good many; but if it’s the man I think you mean he lives in one of the cottages behind the church.  Old Barlow, they call him.’

’There can’t be two such men—­he must be at least a century old.  If any one told me he were a hundred and twenty I shouldn’t be inclined to doubt the fact.  I never saw such a shrivelled, wrinkled visage, bloodless, too, as if the poor old wretch never felt your fresh mountain air upon his hollow cheeks.  A dreadful face.  It will haunt me for a month.’

‘It must be old Barlow,’ replied Steadman.  ‘Good day, sir.’

He walked on with his swinging step, and at such a pace that he was up the side of the Fell and close upon old Barlow’s heels when Hammond turned to look after him five minutes later.

‘There’s a man who shows few traces of age, at any rate,’ thought Hammond.  ‘Yet her ladyship told me that he is over seventy.’

CHAPTER XIX.

THE OLD MAN ON THE FELL.

Having made up his mind to stay at Fellside until after Easter, Maulevrier settled down very quietly—­for him.  He rode a good deal, fished a little, looked after his dogs, played billiards, made a devout appearance in the big square pew at St. Oswald’s on Sunday mornings, and behaved altogether as a reformed character.  Even his grandmother was fain to admit that Maulevrier was improved, and that Mr. Hammond’s influence upon him must be exercised for good and not for evil.

‘I plunged awfully last year, and the year before that,’ said Maulevrier, sitting at tea in her ladyship’s morning room one afternoon about a week after his return, when she had expressed her gracious desire that the two young men should take tea with her.

Mary was in charge of the tea-pot and brass kettle, and looked as radiant and as fresh as a summer morning.  A regular Gainsborough girl, Hammond called her, when he praised her to her brother; a true English beauty, unsophisticated, a little rustic, but full of youthful sweetness.

‘You see, I didn’t know what a racing stable meant,’ continued Maulevrier, mildly apologetic—­’in fact, I thought it was an easy way for a nobleman to make as good a living as your City swells, with their soft goods or their Brummagem ware, a respectable trade for a gentleman to engage in.  And it was only when I was half ruined that I began to understand the business; and as soon as I did understand it I made up my mind to get out of it; and I am happy to say that I sold the very last of my stud in February, and Tony Lumpkin is his own man again.  So you may welcome the prodigal grandson, and order the fatted calf to be slain, grandmother!’