There was little traffic on the road that
climbed up from Wychford in the valley of the swift Greenrush five miles
away, and there was less traffic on the road beyond, which for eight
miles sent branch after branch to remote farms and hamlets until itself
became no more than a sheep track and faded out upon a hilly pasturage.
Yet even this unfrequented road only bisected the village at the end of
its wide street, where in the morning when the children were at school
and the labourers at work in the fields the silence was cloistral, where
one could stand listening to the larks high overhead, and where the
lightest footstep aroused curiosity, so that one turned the head to peep
and peer for the cause of so strange a sound.
Mr. Ogilvie's parish had a large superficial area; but his parishioners
were not many outside the village, and in that country of wide pastures
the whole of his cure did not include half-a-dozen farms. There was no
doctor and no squire, unless Will Starling of Rushbrooke Grange could be
counted as the squire.
Halfway to Wychford and close to the boundary of the two parishes an
infirm signpost managed with the aid of a stunted hawthorn to keep
itself partially upright and direct the wayfarer to Wych Maries.
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