He was not intended for a country parish, and that practical human comprehension of the ultimate value of little daily details, without which a pastor never yet understood his flock, was not vouchsafed to him.
"Passen takes no account o' churchyard," River Andrew had said, and neither he nor any other in Farlingford could account for the special neglect to which was abandoned that particular corner of the burial ground where the late Mrs.Marvin reposed beneath an early Victorian headstone of singular hideousness.
Mr.Marvin always went round the other way.
"Seems as he has forgotten her wonderful quick," commented the women of Farlingford.

But perhaps they were wrong.

If he had forgotten, he might be expected to go round by the south side of the church by accident occasionally, especially as it was the shorter way from the rectory to the porch.

He was an absent-minded man, but he always remembered, as River Andrew himself admitted, to go north about.

And his wife's grave was overgrown by salted grass as were the rest.
Farlingford had accepted him, when his College, having no use for such a dreamer elsewhere, gave him the living, not only with resignation, but with equanimity.