Let him live on in this way for another twenty years, and stories would be told of him to children in the nursery.

The case of assault and battery, a thing of the far past, would probably develop into a fable of manslaughter, of murder; his wife's death was already regarded very much in that light, and would class him with Bluebeard; his house on the Heath would assume a forbidding aspect, and dread whispers would be exchanged of what went on there under the shadow of night.

Was it not already beginning to be remarked by his neighbours that you met him wandering about lonely places at unholy hours, and that he shunned you, like one with a guilty conscience?
Let him advance in years, his face lose its broad colour, his hair grow scant and grey, his figure, per chance, stoop a little, his eyes acquire the malignity of miserly old age--and there you have the hero of a Dunfield legend.

Even thus do such grow.
But he is sitting by his fireside this New Year's Eve, still a young man, still fresh-coloured, only looking tired and lonely, and, in fact, meditating an attempt to recover his interest in life.

He had admitted a partner to his business chiefly that he might be free to quit Yorkshire for a time, and at present he was settling affairs to that end.