The Reverend Septimus Marvin had lost his wife five years earlier.
It was commonly said that he had never been the same man since.
Which was untrue. Much that is commonly said will, on
investigation, be found to be far from the truth. Septimus Marvin
had, so to speak, been the same man since infancy. He had always
looked vaguely at the world through spectacles; had always been at a
loss among his contemporaries--a generation already tainted by that
shallow spirit of haste which is known to-day as modernity--at a
loss for a word; at a loss for a companion soul.

He was a scholar and a learned historian. His companions were
books, and he communed in spirit with writers who were dead and
gone.

Had he ever been a different man his circumstances would assuredly
have been other. His wife, for instance, would in all human
probability have been alive. His avocation might have been more
suited to his capabilities. He was not intended for a country
parish, and that practical human comprehension of the ultimate value
of little daily details, without which a pastor never yet understood
his flock, was not vouchsafed to him.

"Passen takes no account o' churchyard," River Andrew had said, and
neither he nor any other in Farlingford could account for the
special neglect to which was abandoned that particular corner of the
burial ground where the late Mrs. Marvin reposed beneath an early
Victorian headstone of singular hideousness.