between the cat and the sixpence is uncertain, but during the last months
of Angleside's stay at the vicarage the ingenuity of Simon Gunn's yellow
cat in getting over the wire netting reached such a pitch that the vicar
began to prepare a letter to the Bishop Stortford _Chronicle_ on the
relations generally existing between cats and asparagus beds.

Another event in the life of the vicarage was the periodical lameness of
the vicar's strawberry mare, followed by the invariable discovery that
George Horsnell the village blacksmith had run a nail into her foot when
he shoed her last. Invariably, also, the vicar threatened that in future
the mare should be shod by Hawkins the rival blacksmith, who was a
dissenter and had consequently never been employed by the vicarage.
Moreover it was generally rumoured once every year that old Nat Barker,
the octogenarian cripple who had not been able to stand upon his feet for
twenty years, was at the point of death. He invariably recovered,
however, in time to put in an appearance by proxy at the distribution of
a certain dole of a loaf and a shilling on boxing day. It was told also
that in remote times the Puckeridge hounds had once come that way and
that the fox had got into the churchyard. A repetition of this stirring
event was anxiously looked for during many years, every time that the
said pack met within ten miles of Billingsfield, but hitherto it had been
looked for in vain. On the whole the life at the vicarage was not
eventful, and the studies of the two young men who imbibed learning at
the feet of the Reverend Augustin Ambrose were rarely interrupted.

Mrs. Ambrose herself represented the feminine element in the society of
the little place. The new doctor was a strange man, suspected of being a
free-thinker, and he was not married. The Hall, for there was a Hall at
Billingsfield, was uninhabited, and had been uninhabited for years. The
estate which belonged to it was unimportant and moreover was in Chancery