Scroope itself, though a large village, stood a good deal out of the world.  Within the last year or two a railway has been opened, with a Scroope Road Station, not above three miles from the place; but in the old lord’s time it was eleven miles from its nearest station, at Dorchester, with which it had communication once a day by an omnibus.  Unless a man had business with Scroope nothing would take him there; and very few people had business with Scroope.  Now and then a commercial traveller would visit the place with but faint hopes as to trade.  A post-office inspector once in twelve months would call upon plethoric old Mrs. Applejohn, who kept the small shop for stationery, and was known as the postmistress.  The two sons of the vicar, Mr. Greenmarsh, would pass backwards and forwards between their father’s vicarage and Marlbro’ school.  And occasionally the men and women of Scroope would make a journey to their county town.  But the Earl was told that old Mrs. Brock of the Scroope Arms could not keep the omnibus on the road unless he would subscribe to aid it.  Of course he subscribed.  If he had been told by his steward to subscribe to keep the cap on Mrs. Brock’s head, he would have done so.  Twelve pounds a year his Lordship paid towards the omnibus, and Scroope was not absolutely dissevered from the world.

The Earl himself was never seen out of his own domain, except when he attended church.  This he did twice every Sunday in the year, the coachman driving him there in the morning and the head-groom in the afternoon.  Throughout the household it was known to be the Earl’s request to his servants that they would attend divine service at least once every Sunday.  None were taken into service but they who were or who called themselves members of the Church Establishment.  It is hardly probable that many dissenters threw away the chance of such promotion on any frivolous pretext of religion.  Beyond this request, which, coming from the mouth of Mrs. Bunce, became very imperative, the Earl hardly ever interfered with his domestics.  His own valet had attended him for the last thirty years; but, beyond his valet and the butler, he hardly knew the face of one of them.  There was a gamekeeper at Scroope Manor, with two under-gamekeepers; and yet, for, some years, no one, except the gamekeepers, had ever shot over the lands.  Some partridges and a few pheasants were, however, sent into the house when Mrs. Bunce, moved to wrath, would speak her mind on that subject.

The Earl of Scroope himself was a tall, thin man, something over seventy at the time of which I will now begin to speak.  His shoulders were much bent, but otherwise he appeared to be younger than his age.  His hair was nearly white, but his eyes were still bright, and the handsome well-cut features of his fine face were not reduced to shapelessness by any of the ravages of time, as is so often the case with men who are infirm as well as old.  Were it not for the long and heavy eyebrows, which gave something