They had been there before he came into office, and it was not his place to seek into their history; and if it had been, he would not have done it.

For his sympathies were (as was natural and native to a man so placed) with all outsiders, and the people who compress into one or two generations that ignorance of lineage which some few families strive to defer for centuries, showing thereby unwise insistence, if latter-day theories are correct.
But if Master Jordas knew little of these people, somebody else knew more about them, and perhaps too much about one of them.

Lancelot Carnaby, still called "Pet," in one of those rushes after random change which the wildness of his nature drove upon him, had ridden his pony to a stand-still on the moor one sultry day of that August.

No pity or care for the pony had he, but plenty of both for his own dear self.

The pony might be left for the crows to pick his bones, so far as mattered to Pet Carnaby; but it mattered very greatly to a boy like him to have to go home upon his own legs.