at one end of it, smoking his black clay pipe, and he remarked upon the wan face and sad eyes of the stranger.
"You have overtired yourself," he said. "It doesn't do for old chaps like you and me to forget our years."
"I'm better now, thank you," John answered. "Can you tell me, friend, how that one cottage came among all those fine houses?"
"Why," said the old fellow, thumping his crutch energetically upon the ground, "that cottage belongs to the most obstinate woman in all England. That woman, if you'll believe me, has been offered the price of the cottage ten times over, and yet she won't part with it. They have even promised to remove it stone by stone, and put it up on some more convenient place, and pay her a good round sum into the bargain, but, God bless you! she wouldn't so much as hear of it."
"And why was that?" asked John.
"Well, that's just the funny part of it. It's all on account of a mistake. You see her spark went away when I was a youngster, and she's got it into her head that he may come back some day, and that he won't know where to go unless the cottage is there. Why, if the fellow were alive he would be as old as you, but I've no doubt he's dead long ago. She's well quit of him, for he must have been a scamp to abandon her as he did."
"Oh, he abandoned her, did he?"
"Yes—went off to the States, and never so much as sent a word to bid her good-bye. It was a cruel
