A Story of a Walnut

He was a small old man, curious to look at, and every day when I came
out of my cottage and passed his garden he was there, his crutches
under his arms, leaning on the gate, silently regarding me as I went
by. Not boldly; his round dark eyes were like those of some shy animal
peering inquisitively but shyly at the passer-by. His was a tumble-down
old thatched cottage, leaky and miserable to live in, with about three-
quarters of an acre of mixed garden and orchard surrounding it. The
trees were of several kinds--cherry, apple, pear, plum, and one big
walnut; and there were also shade trees, some shrubs and currant and
gooseberry bushes, mixed with vegetables, herbs, and garden flowers.
The man himself was in harmony with his disorderly but picturesque
surroundings, his clothes dirty and almost in rags; an old jersey in
place of a shirt, and over it two and sometimes three waistcoats of
different shapes and sizes, all of one indeterminate earthy colour; and
over these an ancient coat too big for the wearer. The thin hair, worn
on the shoulders, was dust-colour mixed with grey, and to crown all
there was a rusty rimless hat, shaped like an inverted flowerpot. From
beneath this strange hat the small strange face, with the round,
furtive, troubled eyes, watched me as I passed.

The people I lodged with told me his history. He had lived there many
years, and everybody knew him, but nobody liked him,--a cunning, foxy,
grabbing old rascal; unsocial, suspicious, unutterably mean. Never in
all the years of his life in the village had he given a sixpence or a
penny to anyone; nor a cabbage, nor an apple, nor had he ever lent a
helping hand to a neighbour nor shown any neighbourly feeling.

He had lived for himself alone; and was alone in the world, in his
miserable cottage, and no person had any pity for him in his loneliness
and suffering now when he was almost disabled by rheumatism.

He was not a native of the village; he had come to it a young man, and
some kindly-disposed person had allowed him to build a small hut as a
shelter at the side of his hedge. Now the village was at one end of a
straggling common, and many irregular strips and patches of common-land
existed scattered about among the cottages and orchards. It was at a
hedge-side on the border of one of these isolated patches that the
young stranger, known as an inoffensive, diligent, and exceedingly
quiet young man, set up his hovel. To protect it from the cattle he
made a small ditch before it. This ditch he made very deep, and the
earth thrown out he built into a kind of rampart, and by its outer edge
he put a row of young holly plants, which a good-natured woodman made
him a present of. He was advised to plant the holly behind the ditch,
but