He came to Deadham ardent for the reformation of that remote, benighted spot, so disgracefully, as he feared—­and rather hoped—­behind the times.  He suspected its canon-vicar of being very much too easy-going; and its population, in respect of moral conduct, of being lamentably lax.  In neither of which suppositions, it must be admitted, was he altogether incorrect.  But he intended to alter all that!—­Regarding himself thus, in the light of a providentially selected new broom, he applied himself diligently to sweep.  A high-minded and earnest, if not conspicuously well-bred young man, he might in a suburban parish have done excellent work.  But upon Deadham, with its enervating, amorous climate and queer inheritance of forest and seafaring—­in other words poaching and smuggling—­blood, he was wasted, out of his element and out of touch.  The slow moving South Saxon cocked a shrewd sceptical eye at him, sized him up and down and sucked in its cheek refusing to be impressed.  While by untoward accident, his misfortune rather than his fault, the earliest of his moral sweepings brought him into collision with the most reactionary element in the community, namely the inhabitants of the black cottages upon the Island.

The event fell out thus.  The days shortened, the evenings lengthened growing misty and secret as October advanced.  The roads became plashy and rutted, the sides of them silent with fallen leaves under foot.  An odd sense of excitement flickers through such autumn twilights.  Boys herded in little troops on wickedness intent.  Whooping and whistling to disarm their elders’ suspicion until the evil deed should be fairly within reach, then mum as mice, stealthily vanishing, becoming part and parcel of the earth, the hedge, the harsh dusky grasses of the sand-hills, the foreshore lumber on the beach.

Late one afternoon, the hour of a hidden sunset, Reginald Sawyer called at The Hard; and to his eminent satisfaction—­for social aspirations were by no means foreign to him—­was invited to remain to tea.  The ladies—­Damaris and Miss Felicia—­were kind, the cakes and cream superlative.  He left in high feather; and, at Damaris’ suggestion, took a short cut through the Wilderness and by a path crossing the warren to the lane, leading up from the causeway, which joins the high-road just opposite the post office and Mrs. Doubleday’s shop.  By following this route he would save quite half a mile on his homeward journey; since the Grey House, where he enjoyed the Miss Minetts’ assiduous and genteel hospitality, is situate at the extreme end of Deadham village on the road to Lampit.