Alice sleeps under the whispering elms of the old Carlisle
churchyard, beside the husband of her youth, that story may be
given, in all its old-time sweetness, to the world.



CHAPTER XXV

THE LOVE STORY OF THE AWKWARD MAN

(Written by the Story Girl)


Jasper Dale lived alone in the old homestead which he had named
Golden Milestone. In Carlisle this giving one's farm a name was
looked upon as a piece of affectation; but if a place must be
named why not give it a sensible name with some meaning to it? Why
Golden Milestone, when Pinewood or Hillslope or, if you wanted to
be very fanciful, Ivy Lodge, might be had for the taking?

He had lived alone at Golden Milestone since his mother's death;
he had been twenty then and he was close upon forty now, though he
did not look it. But neither could it be said that he looked
young; he had never at any time looked young with common youth;
there had always been something in his appearance that stamped him
as different from the ordinary run of men, and, apart from his
shyness, built up an intangible, invisible barrier between him and
his kind. He had lived all his life in Carlisle; and all the
Carlisle people knew of or about him--although they thought they
knew everything--was that he was painfully, abnormally shy. He