His wild-goose chase to America had, when it had been considered worth while discussing at all, been regarded as being very much the kind of thing a Mount Dunstan might do with some secret and disreputable end in view.
No one had heard the exact truth, and no one would have been inclined to believe if they had heard it.

That he had lived as plain Jem Salter, and laboured as any hind might have done, in desperate effort and mad hope, would not have been regarded as a fact to be credited.

He had gone away, he had squandered money, he had returned, he was at Mount Dunstan again, living the life of an objectionable recluse--objectionable, because the owner of a place like Mount Dunstan should be a power and an influence in the county, should be counted upon as a dispenser of hospitalities, as a supporter of charities, as a dignitary of weight.

He was none of these--living no one knew how, slouching about with his gun, riding or walking sullenly over the roads and marshland.
Just one man knew him intimately, and this one had been from his fifteenth year the sole friend of his life.

He had come, then--the Reverend Lewis Penzance--a poor and unhealthy scholar, to be vicar of the parish of Dunstan.