Transcribed from the 1913 Hodder and Stoughton edition by DavidPrice email ccx074coventryacukCATHERINE FURZECHAPTER IIt was a bright hot August Saturday in the market town ofEastthorpe in the eastern Midlands in the year 1840  Eastthorpelay about five miles on the western side of the Fens in a verylevel country on the banks of a river broad and deep but with onlyjust sufficient fall to enable its longlingering waters to reachthe sea  It was an ancient market town with a sixarched stonebridge and with a High Street from which three or four smaller andnarrower streets connected by courts and alleys diverged at rightangles  In the middle of the town was the church an immensebuilding big enough to hold half Eastthorpe and celebrated for itsbeautiful spire and its peal of eight bells  Round the church laythe churchyard fringed with huge elms and in the Abbey Close asit was called which was the outer girdle of the churchyard on threesides the fourth side of the square being the High Street therelived in 1840 the principal doctor the lawyer the parson and twoaged gentlewomen with some property who were daughters of one ofthe former partners in the bank had been born in Eastthorpe andhad scarcely ever quitted it  Here also were a young ladiesseminary and an ancient grammar school for the education of fortyboys sons of freemen of the town  The houses in the Close were notof the same class as the rest they were mostly old red brick withwhite sashes and they all had gardens long narrow and shadywhich on the south side of the Close ran down to the river  Oneof these houses was even older blacktimbered gabled plasteredthe sole remains saving the church of Eastthorpe as it was in thereign of Henry the EighthJust beyond the church going from the bridge the High Street wasso wide that the houses on either side were separated by a space ofover two hundred feet  This elongated space was the marketplaceIn the centre was the Moot Hall a quaint little building supportedon oak pillars and in the shelter underneath the farmers assembledon market day  All round the Moot Hall and extending far up anddown the street were cattlepens and sheeppens which were neverremoved  Most of the shops were still bowwindowed with smallpanes of glass but the first innovation indicative of the new eraat hand had just been made  The druggist as a man of science andadvanced ideas had replaced his bowwindow with plateglass hadput a cornice over it had stuccoed his bricks and had erected akind of balustrade of stucco so as to hide as much as possible theattic windows which looked over meekly protesting  Nearlyopposite the Moot Hall was the Bell Inn the principal inn in thetown  There were other inns respectable enough such as the Bulla little higher up patronised by the smaller commercial travellersand farmers but the entrance passage to the Bull had sand on thefloor and carriers made it a house of call  To the Bell the twocoaches came which went through Eastthorpe and there they changedhorses  Both the Bull and the Bell had market dinners but at theBell the charge was threeandsixpence sherry was often drunk andthere the steward to the Honourable Mr Eaton the principallandowner always met the tenants  The Bell was Tory and the Bullwas Whig but no stranger of respectability Whig or Tory visitingEastthorpe could possibly hesitate about going to the Bell with itslarge gilded device projecting over the pathway with its broadarchway at the side always freshly gravelled and its handsomebalcony on the first floor from which the Tory county candidatesduring election times addressed the free and independent electorsand cattleEastthorpe was a malting town and down by the water were two orthree large malthouses  The view from the bridge was notparticularly picturesque but it was pleasant especially in summerwhen the wind was southwest  The malthouses and their cowls thewharves and the gaily painted sailing barges alongside the fringeof slanting willows turning the silvergray sides of their foliagetowards the breeze the island in the middle of the river withbigger willows the large expanse of sky the soft clouds distinctin form almost to the far distant horizon and looking eastwardsthe illimitable distance towards the fens and the seaall this madeup a landscape more suitable perhaps to some persons than rock orwaterfall although no picture had ever been painted of it andnobody had ever come to see itSuch was Eastthorpe  For hundreds of years had the shadow of StMarys swept slowly over the roofs underneath it and of all thoseyears scarcely a line of its history survived save what waswritten in the churchyard or in the church registers  The town hadstood for the Parliament in the days of the Civil War and there hadbeen a skirmish in the place but who fought in it who were killedin it and what the result was nobody knew  Half a dozen oldskulls of much earlier date and of great size were once found in agravel pit two miles away and were the subject of much talk sometaking them for Romans some for Britons some for Saxons and somefor Danes  As it was impossible to be sure if they were Christianthey could not be put in consecrated ground they were thereforeincluded in an auction of dead and live stock and were bought bythe doctor  Surnames survived in Eastthorpe with singularpertinacity for it was remote from the world but what was therelationship between the scores of Thaxtons for example whosedeaths were inscribed on the tombstones some of them all awry andweatherworn and the Thaxtons of 1840 no living Thaxton couldtell every spiritual trace of them having disappeared more utterlythan their bones  Their bones indeed did not disappear and werea source of much trouble to the sexton for in digging a new gravethey came up to the surface in quantities and had to be shovelledin and covered up again so that the