The Master-Girl by Ashton Hilliers

HE had come gently and observantly up the glen, tapping here and scratching there as he climbed, and ever and anon straightening an elderly back to deliver a small cough. Also at intervals he would turn his face to the way by which he had come to rest the plantar muscles and study the lie of the land.
Chance-led he came and unadventurously, as one might say, and with no more premonition of impending change, or of this being a White Day in his life than had you, yourself, dear reader, when you left your breakfast-table this morning.
He was a little person in the clerical wideawake and dark tweeds of a don in vacation,[Pg 2] elderly and grey, with heavy, lower-middle-class features refined by expression as a sunset refines a dull street.