It typified the slow tranquillity of the bailiwick, which was removed from the central life of the Five Towns, and unconnected therewith by even a tram or an omnibus.

Only within recent years had Turnhill got so much as a railway station--rail-head of a branch line.

Turnhill was the extremity of civilization in those parts.

Go northwards out of this Market Square, and you would soon find yourself amid the wild and hilly moorlands, sprinkled with iron-and-coal villages whose red-flaming furnaces illustrated the eternal damnation which was the chief article of their devout religious belief.

And in the Market Square not even the late edition of the _Staffordshire Signal_ was cried, though it was discreetly on sale with its excellent sporting news in a few shops.