On a cool crisp evening in January, in the year seventeen hundred and fifty, the High Street of Marden Fee presents to us the appearance of a vivid dream. It is a broad street for so small a place: broad and brief, branching at its west end into three smaller roads whose junction forms two obtuse angles, and at the east end dwindling to a lane that winds unobtrusively past the parish church. The church, with its surrounding acre of tombs, stands on an eminence that was formerly cultivated ground and the scene of human sacrifice. It dominates the High Street, and is confronted at the other end by an inn, The Nick of Time, which stands, square and squat and comfortable, between two prongs of the fork, with the road to Glatting going north to the right of it, and two smaller roads, the one to Dyking Manor and the other to Medlock, running south-east and south-west. To a careless eye, as to a fanciful mind, these two buildings, the church and the tavern, close the street up, so that it looks like an island of habitation in a sea of field and forest. Some fourteen furlongs behind the church, and beyond our sight at the moment, stands the residence of young Squire Marden, whose grandfather was the first lord of this fee, a slice then newly-carved from the parish of Glatting. The High Street is deserted. It seems to float, without motion, in a clear white silence. The smoke curling from its chimneys oozes slowly upwards and is gently teased into wisps and tatters by the wind; and the hanging tavern-sign sends a long black banner streaming across the moonwashed wall. All the houses are in darkness, except the inn itself, whose parlour window, the life and heart of the scene, attracts the eye with a glowing square of red. Hovering we watch, surveying the whole; and presently can dimly discern something moving, with aged precision, in the shadow of Church Lane. Stepping at last into the brightness of the street, it is seen to be the figure of an old man, small and bent. The sound of his boots on the hard road breaks sharply into the surrounding silence; echo gives it back and sends it radiating in spirals to the sky. His walk is confident if slow. Without lifting his eyes from the ground he moves forward unfalteringly, as though drawn by the warmth of the red window. Nor does he for more than a moment pause at the inn door. His hand finds the latch. As the door opens, there escapes into the street, like heat from an oven, a warm gust of human sound. Then the door is slammed to, and the night is still, and the sounds that lately invaded it are become a memory.
Laughter greeted the old man’s entry, a laughter composed of many elements. Dick Mykelborne the wheelwright’s was genial, even admiring. Dick was a hearty and a godly fellow, big and black-bearded and nearing fifty. Like most other men of his age who wished themselves younger, he derived an unconscious comfort from the existence of this ancient man, took pleasure in his company, and respected him for having dodged death so long. The old man’s weakness made him feel his own strength, and the old man’s longevity made him feel immortal, for he was of a sanguine temperament and had that spirit in him that can read all signs in the sky as signs of fair weather. He sat near the fire, in the corner of the high-backed settle, and his large hand clasped lovingly a pint pot. His neighbour Tom Shellett, a lean stringy young fellow with eyes as placid as the cows he herded, laughed for no better reason than that the others laughed; Broome, the young master of twelve scattered acres, sounded a derisive note, being still insolent with youth; Gipsy Noke gave a shy hesitating grin, for he was conscious, as a borderer but newly settled, of his inferior status (moreover, the old man was gardener at the Vicarage and in that capacity had once rebuked him); and Roger Peakod, having drowned his small wit in ale, could only giggle and stare. The potman stared without giggling, and remained so, like a fool, till his master came close and spake a sharp word in his ear. This Erasmus Bailey, the innkeeper, was the only one who at this moment had attention for the company as well as for the old man from Squire’s. A comparative stranger among them, for he had been in the village but twenty years, he had the reputation of being something of a scholar, and a cut above the general run of men. Rumour called him a runaway schoolmaster. This gave him authority, without—for he was a genial fellow enough—making him the less liked by his humble patrons. If he smiled now at the comedy staged in his inn parlour, it was rather with wonder than with mirth, for a half-fledged thought fluttered in his head that if, instead of this aged man, a small precocious child had entered the inn parlour, the attitude of these fellows to their visitor could hardly have been much different; and a couplet—for he had the knack of such things—began shaping in his mind: