But from their washing ground the women could not see the hill that brings to the bottom of the village the crooked road from Sewerby.

Down that hill came a horseman slowly, with nobody to notice him, though himself on the watch for everybody; and there in the bottom below the first cottage he allowed his horse to turn aside and cool hot feet and leathery lips, in a brown pool spread by Providence for the comfort of wayworn roadsters.
The horse looked as if he had labored far, while his rider was calmly resting; for the cross-felled sutures of his flank were crusted with gray perspiration, and the runnels of his shoulders were dabbled; and now it behooved him to be careful how he sucked the earthy-flavored water, so as to keep time with the heaving of his barrel.

In a word, he was drinking as if he would burst--as his hostler at home often told him--but the clever old roadster knew better than that, and timing it well between snorts and coughs, was tightening his girths with deep pleasure.
"Enough, my friend, is as good as a feast," said his rider to him, gently, yet strongly pulling up the far-stretched head, "and too much is worse than a famine." The horse, though he did not belong to this gentleman, but was hired by him only yesterday, had already discovered that, with him on his back, his own judgment must lie dormant, so that he quietly whisked his tail and glanced with regret at the waste of his drip, and then, with a roundabout step, to prolong the pleasure of this little wade, sadly but steadily out he walked, and, after the necessary shake, began his first invasion of the village.

His rider said nothing, but kept a sharp look-out.
Now this was Master Geoffrey Mordacks, of the ancient city of York, a general factor and land agent.

What a "general factor" is, or is not, none but himself can pretend to say, even in these days of definition, and far less in times when thought was loose; and perhaps Mr.Mordacks would rather have it so.