It was offered, of course, and accepted, merely as a stopgap.  But twenty-five years had passed, and at Langona Parson Flood remained.  It had cost him twenty of these to wipe off his Oxford debts, with interest; but he had managed to retain the small remnant of his capital, and this with his benefice yielded an income better than a day labourer’s.  That he was still a bachelor goes without saying.  In the summer he fished; in the winter he followed, afoot, a pack of harriers kept by his patron, Sir Harry Vyell of Carwithiel.  These were his recreations.  He could not afford to travel, and cared little for reading.  His library consisted of his Bible, two or three small Divinity Handbooks, a Pickwick, Stonehenge on the Dog, and a couple of “Handley Cross” novels, with coloured illustrations by John Leech.  Twice a year or thereabouts a letter reached him from his brother in Calcutta, who was apparently prospering, and had a wife and three children—­though for some years the letters had brought no news of them.

“Something was wrong,” Parson Jack decided after a while, finding that his messages to them met with no answer; and he felt a delicacy in asking questions.  He believed that the children had been sent home to England—­he did not know where—­and would have liked to pay them a visit.  But for him a journey was out of the question.  So he lived on, alone and forgotten.

On Sundays he wore a black suit, which had lasted him for ten years, and would have to last for another five at least.  On week-days he dressed in blue guernsey and corduroys, and smoked a clay pipe.  His broad-brimmed clerical hat alone distinguished him from the farm-labourers in his parish; but when at work upon the church—­patching its shingle roof, or pouring mortar into its gaping wounds—­he discarded this for a maroon-coloured cap, not unlike a biretta, which offered less surface to the high winds.

He knew nothing of architecture:  could not, in fact, distinguish Norman work from Perpendicular; and at first had taken to these odd jobs of masonry as a handy way of killing time.  He had wit enough, however, to learn pretty soon that the whole fabric was eaten with rot and in danger from every gale; and by degrees (he could not explain how) the ruin had set up a claim on him.  In his worst dreams he saw it toppling, falling; during the winter gales he lay awake listening, imagining the throes and shudders of its old beams, and would be abroad before daybreak, waiting for the light to assure him that it yet stood.  A casual tourist, happening on him at work, some summers before, had mistaken him for a hired mason, and discoursed learnedly on the beauties of the edifice and the pity of its decay.  “That’s a vile job you have in hand, my friend—­ a bit of sheer vandalism,” said the tourist; “but I suppose the Parson who employs you knows no better.”  Parson Jack had been within an ace of revealing himself, but now changed his mind