CHAPTER Ten: The Last of His Name.
I came by chance to the village--Norton, we will call it, just to call it something, but the county in which it is situated need not be named.
It happened that about noon that day I planned to pass the night at a village where, as I was informed at a small country town I had rested in, there was a nice inn--"The Fox and Grapes"-- to put up at, but when I arrived, tired and hungry, I was told that I could not have a bed and that the only thing to do was to try Norton, which also boasted an inn.
It was hard to have to turn some two or three miles out of my road at that late hour on a chance of a shelter for the night, but there was nothing else to do, so on to Norton I went with heavy steps, and arrived a little after sunset, more tired and hungry than ever, only to be told at the inn that they had no accommodation for me, that their one spare room had been engaged! "What am I to do, then ?" I demanded of the landlord.

"Beyond this village I cannot go to-night--do you want me to go out and sleep under a hedge ?" He called his spouse, and after some conversation they said the village baker might be able to put me up, as he had a spare bedroom in his house.

So to the baker's I went, and found it a queer, ramshackle old place, standing a little back from the village street in a garden and green plot with a few fruit trees growing on it.

To my knock the baker himself came out--a mild-looking, flabby-faced man, with his mouth full, in a very loose suit of pyjama-like garments of a bluish floury colour.

I told him my story, and he listened, swallowing his mouthful, then cast his eyes down and rubbed his chin, which had a small tuft of hairs growing on it, and finally said, "I don't know.