Doctor and Mrs. Jackson 135 



say : "I poke and pry into all the corners of 

 the old place, and when I find anything that 

 cfltches my eye I carry it home and hide it away. 

 And really I don't know that my treasures will 

 come to light, any more than the Doctor's 

 up there in the tower." 



Those who were ever admitted to his study, as 

 I sometimes was in my college vacations, knew 

 that there was great store of hidden treasure 

 there ; and now and again he would talk to me of 

 the church and its monuments, of the manor and 

 its copyholds, of furlongs and virgates and courts 

 leet and courts baron, and many other things 

 for which I cared little, though I listened to 

 please him, and left him well pleased myself. 



But at other times, and chiefly on those dim 

 still days of autumn when a mist is apt to hang 

 over men's hearts as over field and woodland, he 

 would walk up and down his garden path ' talk- 

 ing to hisself in furrin tongues ' as our old sexton 

 expressed it, who heard him as he dug a grave 

 in the adjoining churchyard. Once or twice I 

 heard him myself, when I happened to be within 

 range of his gentle voice. Sometimes it was 



