16 STRAY -AW AYS 



of a nether lip, or even, more possibly, with grimmest 

 unconcern, while the Delegate's quick hands joined 

 rafter to roof-tree. Thirty years of unquestioned 

 supremacy in matters of carpentering, and perhaps 

 in some other matters, might give a reasonable 

 contempt for the opinions of those who in a like 

 period have been supreme in nothing, unless it be in 

 the ordering of their pig-sties. 



To-day the workshop is closed, and walking past it 

 up the lane, there is nothing to be heard of the cheerful 

 din of hammer and scream of saw. Unfinished cart- 

 wheels lie about the door, and the delegate's bay filly 

 has hung her head over the wall of the field in con- 

 templation of these, and of an outside car which stands 

 in evil plight, tilted back on its springs, with a broken 

 shaft pointing skywards. She is evidently satisfied 

 that this stillest of October days is nothing less than 

 the Sabbath, and that the heavy cart-straddle which 

 has already hollowed her three -year-old back will not 

 to-day be placed there. As to the day of the week 

 she is mistaken, but some feeling of suspension there 

 certainly is, of pause or interval in which village life 

 has been arrested, with the exception of a solitary 

 village cock, whose crows now and again supplicate 

 the foggy stillness for an answer. 



The Delegate's cottage cannot architecturally be 

 compared with his workshop — ^in fact, it only escapes 

 the designation of cabin by virtue of possessing three 

 windows, and the almost unknown departure of a 

 flower-garden, a three-cornered jungle, where goose- 

 berry-bushes and double dahlias dispute every inch 

 of gi'ound behind a sufficiently neat paling. The door 

 of the house is open as usual, and from the semi- 

 darkness within comes a murmur of voices, hushed 

 but incessant, with an interspersed gi'oan or two which 

 meets the ear on entering. The earthen floor is 



