When Wolf first left his employer’s library, which he did some half-hour later than the squire himself, and entered the school-treat field, he felt nervous and irritable. Everyone he knew in the world seemed to be gathered in that enclosure; and as he stealthily shuffled along the edge of the churchyard, he felt as if he would like to hide himself from them all, down in the silent earth along with young Redfern!

He found himself at a spot where the wall was very low, and, turning his back upon the crowded scene, leaned there for a while unnoticed, gazing at the great perpendicular tower. With the shouts and laughter in his ears, that tower looked incredibly massive and silent. What ebbing and flowing of human lives had it not seen, since unknown hands in the reign of the first Tudor piled it up there, stone upon stone!