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He swung round on the road, waving his stick and cracking his fingers. He had been so busily considering his state and the state of the realm that he had walked past the cross-ways without thinking. He must take the southward road from Superstition Corner—the road to Conster, though he would not go so far. He was on his way to Newhouse to visit the sick, a clerkly duty that he must perform, though the fellow was a sad, sour-faced, round-headed scrub who deserved nothing.

Newhouse stood about half a mile from Superstition Corner. Unlike the cross-ways, which was so called because it had once been the turning for a Mass-house, it had got its name in no especial manner, merely through having been a new house a hundred years ago. It was still called new, though it looked old, with its leaning, lime-washed walls, and its sprawl of weathered roof. It had been built for the present owner's grandfather, a Harman who had married a Douce when first they came over from France—before their name was Dows on the local tongue or they had built their hump-roofed house on Starvencrow hill. They had been bad friends to the Alards, the Harmans and Douces, for when King Charles's star went down they had held by the parliament, and the Protector had given them Conster Manor—Harman the house and farmlands, Douce the furnace. It had been hard work getting them out of it when the King came back; but they had gone at last, to save their skins and their own lawful properties at Newhouse and La Petite Douce—though it was certainly a piece of luck that Accepted Harman had died when he did, leaving no heir but his brother Exalted, who was a poor psalm-singing, low-spirited man, too gutless to cling even to an ill-gotten estate. . . .