for there was no one to forbid me, the squire being dead, the old red Elizabethan house empty, with only a caretaker in the gardener’s lodge to mind it, and the estate for sale.  Three years it had been in that condition, but nobody seemed to want it; occasionally some important person came rushing down in a motor-car, but after running over the house he would come out and, remarking that it was a “rummy old place,” remount his car and vanish in a cloud of dust to be seen no more.

The dead owner, I found, was much in the village mind; and no wonder, since Norton had never been without a squire until he passed away, leaving no one to succeed him.  It was as if some ancient landmark, or an immemorial oak tree on the green in whose shade the villagers had been accustomed to sit for many generations, had been removed.  There was a sense of something wanting something gone out of their lives.  Moreover, he had been a man of a remarkable character, and though they never loved him they yet reverenced his memory.

So much was he in their minds that I could not be in the village and not hear the story of his life—­the story which, I said, interested me less than that of the good baker and his wife.  On his father’s death at a very advanced age he came, a comparative stranger, to Norton, the first half of his life having been spent abroad.  He was then a middle-aged man, unmarried, and a bachelor he remained to the end.  He was of a reticent disposition and was said to be proud; formal, almost cold, in manner; furthermore, he did not share his neighbours’ love of sport of any description, nor did he care for society, and because of all this he was regarded as peculiar, not to say eccentric.  But he was deeply interested in agriculture, especially in cattle and their improvement, and that object grew to be his master passion.  It was a period of great depression, and as his farms fell vacant he took them into his own hands, increased his stock and built model cowhouses, and came at last to be known throughout his own country, and eventually everywhere, as one of the biggest cattle-breeders in England.  But he was famous in a peculiar way.  Wise breeders and buyers shook their heads and even touched their foreheads significantly, and predicted that the squire of Norton would finish by ruining himself.  They were right, he ruined himself; not that he was mentally weaker than those who watched and cunningly exploited him; he was ruined because his object was a higher one than theirs.  He saw clearly that the prize system is a vicious one and that better results may be obtained without it.  He proved this at a heavy cost by breeding better beasts than his rivals, who were all exhibitors and prizewinners, and who by this means got their advertisements and secured the highest prices, while he, who disdained prizes and looked with disgust at the overfed and polished animals at shows, got no advertisements and was compelled to sell at unremunerative prices.  The buyers, it may be mentioned, were always the breeders for shows, and they made a splendid profit out of it.