There was a sense of something wanting something gone out of their lives.

Moreover, he had been a man of a remarkable character, and though they never loved him they yet reverenced his memory.
So much was he in their minds that I could not be in the village and not hear the story of his life--the story which, I said, interested me less than that of the good baker and his wife.

On his father's death at a very advanced age he came, a comparative stranger, to Norton, the first half of his life having been spent abroad.

He was then a middle-aged man, unmarried, and a bachelor he remained to the end.

He was of a reticent disposition and was said to be proud; formal, almost cold, in manner; furthermore, he did not share his neighbours' love of sport of any description, nor did he care for society, and because of all this he was regarded as peculiar, not to say eccentric.