’With my blessed rheumatics, you know it isn’t in me, Lady Mary.  I shall never get no further than the churchyard; but I likes to sit on the wall hard by Wordsworth’s tomb in a warm afternoon, and to see the folks pass over the bridge; and I can potter about looking after my flowers, I can.  But it would be a dull life, now the poor old missus is gone and the bairns all out at service, if it wasn’t for some one dropping in to have a chat, or read me a bit of the news sometimes.  And there isn’t anybody in Grasmere, gentle or simple, that’s kinder to me than you, Lady Mary.  Lord bless you, I do look forward to my newspaper.  Any more of them dreadful smashes?’

‘No, Sam, thank Heaven, there have been no railway accidents.’

’Ah, we shall have ’em in August and September,’ said the old man, cheerily.  ’They’re bound to come then.  There’s a time for all things, as Solomon says.  When the season comes t’smashes all coom.  And no more of these mysterious murders, I suppose, which baffle t’police and keep me awake o’ nights thinking of ’em.’

‘Surely you do not take delight in murder, Mr. Barlow?’ said Hammond.

‘No, sir, I do not wish my fellow-creatures to mak’ awa’ wi’ each other; but if there is a murder going in the papers I like to get the benefit of it.  I like to sit in front of my fire of an evening and wonder about it while I smoke my pipe, and fancy I can see the murderer hiding in a garret in an out-of-the-way alley, or as a stowaway on board a gert ship, or as a miner deep down in a coalpit, and never thinking that even there t’police can track him.  Did you ever hear tell o’ Mr. de Quincey, sir?’

‘I believe I have read every line he ever wrote.’

’Ah, you should have heard him talk about murders.  It would have made you dream queer dreams, just as he did.  He lived for years in the white cottage that Wordsworth once lived in, just behind the street yonder—­a nice, neat, lile gentleman, in a houseful of books.  I’ve had many a talk with him when I was a young man.’

‘And how old may you he now, Mr. Barlow?’

‘Getting on for eighty four, sir.’

’But you are not the oldest man in Grasmere, I should say, by twenty years?’

‘I don’t think there’s many much older than me, sir.’

’The man I saw on the Fell looked at least a hundred.  I wish you could tell me who he is; I feel a morbid curiosity about him.’

He went on to describe the old man in the grey coat, as minutely as he could, dwelling on every characteristic of that singular-looking old person; but Samuel Barlow could not identify the description with any one in Grasmere.  Yet a man of that age, seen walking on the hill-side at eight in the morning, could hardly have come from far afield.

CHAPTER XX.

LADY MAULEVRIER’S LETTER-BAG.