The very first time he rode out to look at it he found the paling had given way in places from the fall of trees, and that some leaned inwards and some outwards, and that one of the gates was off its hinges.  There were also two cows walking about in the wood, and what annoyed him most of all, the iron spikes were rusty and the varnish had all gone rotten and white and streaky on the palings.  He spoke to the bailiff about this, and hauled him out to look at it.  The bailiff rubbed the varnish with his finger, smelt it, and said that it had perished.  He also said there was no such thing as good varnish nowadays, and he added there wasn’t any varnish, not the very best, but wouldn’t go like that with rain and all.  Mr. Hermann-Postlethwaite grumbled a good deal, but he supposed the bailiff knew best; so he told him to see what could be done, and for several weeks he heard no more about it.

I forgot to tell you that about this time the South African War had broken out, and as things were getting pretty tangled, Hermann-Postlethwaite went out with his regiment, the eighth battalion, not of the Berkshire, but of the Orkney regiment.  While he was out there, his brother, in Dr. Charlbury’s home, died, and he succeeded to the baronetcy.  As he already had a V.C. and was now given a D.S.O., as well as being one of the people mentioned in dispatches, he was pretty important by the time he came home, when the war was over, just before the elections of 1900.

When he got home he had a splendid welcome, both from his tenants in Berkshire in passing through and from those of his late brother in the big place in Worcestershire.  He preferred his Berkshire place, however, and, letting the big place to an American of the name of Hendrik K. Boulge, he went back to his first home.  When he got there he thought of the old wood, and went out to look at it.  The palings were mended, but they were covered all over with tar!  He was exceedingly angry, and ordered them to be painted at once; but the bailiff assured him one could not paint over tar, and so did the carpenter and the foreman.  At this he had a fit of rage, and ordered the whole damned thing to be pulled down, and swore he would be damned if he ever had a damned stick or a rail round the damned wood again.  He was no longer young; he was getting stout and rather puffy; he was not so reasonable as of old.  Anyhow, he had the whole thing pulled down.  Next year (that is, in 1901) his wife died.

I wish I had the space to tell you all the other things he did to the wood.  How a friend of his having sold a similar wood on the Thames in building lots at L500 an acre, he put up the whole wood at the same rate.  How, the whole wood being 200 acres in extent, he hoped to make L100,000 out of it.  How he thought this a tidy sum.  How he got no offers at this price, nor at L100, nor at L50.  How an artist offered him L20 for half an acre to put up a red tin bungalow upon.  How he lost his temper with the artist.  How at last he left the whole thing alone and tried to forget all about it.