But as he brushed his smooth hair and combed his beard that morning, neither change nor excitement were very far from him.  He looked over his dressing-glass at the leafless oaks of the park, at the grey sky and the driving rain and he wished something would happen.  He wished somebody might die and leave a great library to be sold, that he might indulge his favourite passion; he wished he had somebody stopping in the Hall—­he almost decided to send and ask the vicar to come to lunch and have a day among the books.  As he entered the breakfast-room at precisely half-past eight o’clock, according to his wont, the butler informed him that Mr. Gall, the village constable, was below and wanted to see him after breakfast.  He received the news in silence and sat down to eat his breakfast and read the morning paper.  Gall had probably come about some petty summons, or to ask what he should do about the small boys who threw stones at the rooks and broke the church windows.  After finishing his meal and his paper in the leisurely manner peculiar to country gentlemen who have nothing to do, the squire rang the bell, sent for the policeman and went into his study, a small room adjoining the library.

Thomas Gall, constable, was a tall fair man with a mild eye and a cheerful face.  Goodwill towards men and plentiful good living had done their work in eradicating from the good man all that stern element which might have been most useful to him in his career, not to say useful to the State.  Each rolling year was pricked in his leathern belt with a new hole as his heart grew more peaceful and his body throve.  He had a goodly girth and weighed full fifteen stone in his uniform; his mild blue eye had inspired confidence in a maiden of Billingsfield parish and Mrs. Gall was now rearing a numerous family of little Galls, all perhaps destined to become mild-eyed and portly village constables in their turn.

The squire, who was not destitute of a sense of humour, never thought of Mr. Gall without a smile, so much out of keeping did the man’s occupation seem with his jovial humour.  Mr. Gall, he said, was the kind of policeman who would bribe a refractory tramp to move on by the present of a pint of beer.  But Gall had a good point.  He was very proud of his profession, and in the exercise of it he showed a discretion which, if it was the better part of his valour, argued unlimited natural courage.  It was a secret profession, he was wont to say, and a man who could not keep a secret would never do for a constable.  He shrouded his ways in an amiable mystery and walked a solitary beat on fine nights; when the nights were not fine there was nobody to see whether he walked his beat or not.  Probably, he faithfully fulfilled his obligations; but his constitution seemed to bear exposure to the weather wonderfully well.  Whether he ever saw anything worth mentioning upon those lonely walks of his, is uncertain; at all events he never mentioned anything he saw, unless it was in the secrecy of the reports he was supposed to transmit from time to time to his superiors.