"Here?" Sophie moved beneath the light of a hole in the roof.

"Nah--none dies here excep' falling off ricks and such. In London
they died." He plucked a lock of wool from his blue smock. "They
was no staple--neither the Elphicks nor the Moones. Shart and
brittle all of 'em. Dead they be seventeen year, for I've been
here caretakin' twenty-five."

"Who does all the wool belong to downstairs?" George asked.

"To the estate. I'll show you the back parts if ye like. You're
from America, ain't ye? I've had a son there once myself." They
followed him down the main stairway. He paused at the turn and
swept one hand toward the wall. "Plenty room, here for your
coffin to come down. Seven foot and three men at each end
wouldn't brish the paint. If I die in my bed they'll 'ave to
up-end me like a milk-can. 'Tis all luck, dye see?"

He led them on and on, through a maze of back kitchens, dairies,
larders, and sculleries, that melted along covered ways into a
farm-house, visibly older than the main building, which again
rambled out among barns, byres, pig-pens, stalls and stables to
the dead fields behind.

"Somehow," said Sophie, sitting exhausted on an ancient
well-curb--"somehow one wouldn't insult these lovely old things
by filling them with hay."

George looked at long stone walls upholding reaches of