me awake o' nights thinking of 'em.'

'Surely you do not take delight in murder, Mr. Barlow?' said Hammond.

'No, sir, I do not wish my fellow-creatures to mak' awa' wi' each other;
but if there is a murder going in the papers I like to get the benefit
of it. I like to sit in front of my fire of an evening and wonder about
it while I smoke my pipe, and fancy I can see the murderer hiding in a
garret in an out-of-the-way alley, or as a stowaway on board a gert
ship, or as a miner deep down in a coalpit, and never thinking that even
there t'police can track him. Did you ever hear tell o' Mr. de Quincey,
sir?'

'I believe I have read every line he ever wrote.'

'Ah, you should have heard him talk about murders. It would have made
you dream queer dreams, just as he did. He lived for years in the white
cottage that Wordsworth once lived in, just behind the street yonder--a
nice, neat, lile gentleman, in a houseful of books. I've had many a talk
with him when I was a young man.'

'And how old may you he now, Mr. Barlow?'

'Getting on for eighty four, sir.'

'But you are not the oldest man in Grasmere, I should say, by twenty
years?'

'I don't think there's many much older than me, sir.'