Some said it should be, ‘St. East,’ because, right across the purple moorland and beyond the line of blue hills where the sun rose, there stretched the sea, miles away and invisible, it is true, but nevertheless asserting its salty savour in every breath of wind that blew across the tufted pines.  ‘St. East,’ therefore, said certain rural sages, was the real name of the village, because it faced the sea towards the east.  Others, however, declared that the name was derived from the memory of some early Norman church on the banks of the peaceful river that wound its slow clear length in pellucid silver ribbons of light round and about the clover fields and high banks fringed with wild rose and snowy thorn, and that it should, therefore, be ‘St. Rest,’ or better still, ’The Saint’s Rest.’  This latter theory had recently received strong confirmation by an unexpected witness to the past,—­as will presently be duly seen and attested.

But St. Rest, or St. Est, whichever name rightly belonged to it, was in itself so insignificant as a ‘benefice,’ that its present rector, vicar, priest and patron had bought it for himself, through the good offices of a friend, in the days when such purchases were possible, and for some ten years had been supreme Dictator of his tiny kingdom and limited people.  The church was his,—­especially his, since he had restored it entirely at his own expense,—­the rectory, a lop-sided, half-timbered house, built in the fifteenth century, was his,—­the garden, full of flowering shrubs, carelessly planted and allowed to flourish at their own wild will, was his,—­the ten acres of pasture-land that spread in green luxuriance round and about his dwelling were his,—­and, best of all, the orchard, containing some five acres planted with the choicest apples, cherries, plums and pears, and bearing against its long, high southern wall the finest peaches and nectarines in the county, was his also.  He had, in fact, everything that the heart of a man, especially the heart of a clergyman, could desire, except a wife,—­and that commodity had been offered to him from many quarters in various delicate and diplomatic ways,—­only to be as delicately and diplomatically rejected.

And truly there seemed no need for any change in his condition.  He had gone on so far in life,—­’so far!’ he would occasionally remind himself, with a little smile and sigh,—­that a more or less solitary habit had, by long familiarity, become pleasant.  Actual loneliness he had never experienced, because it was not in his nature to feel lonely.  His well-balanced intellect had the brilliant quality of a finely-cut diamond, bearing many facets, and reflecting all the hues of life in light and colour; thus it quite naturally happened that most things, even ordinary and common things, interested him.  He was a great lover of books, and, to a moderate extent, a collector of rare editions; he also had a passion for archaeology, wherein he was sustained by a certain poetic insight of which he was himself