From time to time a legal looking personage drove up to the Duke's Head, which was kept by Mr.Abraham Boosey, who was also undertaker to the parish, and which was thought to be a very good inn.

The legal personage stayed a day or two, spending most of his time at the Hall and in driving about to the scattered farms which represented the estate, but he never came to the vicarage, nor did the vicar ever seem to know what he was doing nor why he came.

"He came on business"-- that was all that anybody knew.

His business was to collect rents, of course; but what he did with them, no one was bold enough to surmise.

The estate was in Chancery, it was said, and the definition conveyed about as much to the mind of the average inhabitant of Billingsfield, as if he had been informed that the moon was in perigee or the sun in Scorpio.