"
"Great heavens!" ejaculated Mr. Quest to himself. "And the man must
know that in all human probability the place will be sold over his
head before he is a year older. I wonder if he puts it on or if he
deceives himself. I suppose he has lived here so long that he cannot
realise a condition of things under which he will cease to live here
and the place will belong to somebody else. Or perhaps he is only
brazening it out." And then he strolled away to the back of the house
and had a look at the condition of the outhouses, reflecting that some
of them would be sadly expensive to repair for whoever came into
possession here. After that he crossed the moat and walked through the
somewhat extensive plantations at the back of the house, wondering if
it would not be possible to get enough timber out of them, if one went
to work judiciously, to pay for putting the place in order. Presently
he came to a hedgerow where a row of very fine timber oaks had stood,
of which the Squire had been notoriously fond, and of which he had
himself taken particular and admiring notice in the course of the
previous winter. The trees were gone. In the hedge where they had
grown were a series of gaps like those in an old woman's jaw, and the
ground was still littered with remains of bark and branches and of
faggots that had been made up from the brushwood.
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