"Missis, her told us her'd got a visitor," continued the milkman, resting his pails on the top of a low wall, and straightening his shoulders; "her bides down at the cottage along o' we now--'tis too lonesome for a young maid here o' nights." "Oh, then you are Mistress Perrient's cowman," answered Harrison with relief. "Ees, sir, I be, and I was her grandfather's afore her. Ees--I minds her father's christening, and our young lady's christening; I minds a many things; but times is changed--changed terrible since then." He shook his old head solemnly. "I suppose it was at Hunstanton you were in Sir Gyles' household?" asked Harrison, idly. "Ees, sir; but you understand I was not rightly in his household, so to say; I was allers an outside man, and about the pigs and cows--but lawk! a man can see a lot if a man is only about the pigs and cows--beautiful cows they was too, beautiful! but they be all gone." Richard made a movement to pass on, but the old man had no mind to miss his chance of a gossip. "Seems to me as if I had seen 'ee afore, sir. You were a-visiting at Hunstanton, warn't 'ee, in the old squire's time? I reckoned I knowed 'ee--fine young gentleman you was then, but not so lusty as you be growed now. That was a fine house, now, warn't it? _And_ kept as gentlefolks' houses should be." "Yes, I suppose Sir Gyles was a very rich man." "That he was--and respected. Why he might 'a been a king an' more than a king the way he was thought on in the country. And our young lady--she was always known by the name o' the Queen o' Hunstanton, even when queens was in no great favour in the country; but there--our parish clerk says, says he, there's a Scripture warrant for it--with Queen Esther and a sight more on 'em. So why not Queen o' Hunstanton!" "You made an excellent choice of a queen," said Harrison, willing to humour the old man's desire for a talk. "Ees, that us did; but things was mighty different then. A round dozen serving-men with blue coats there was, not to speak of the butler and the steward, and twenty or more in the stables; and where be 'un all gone--gone like the leaves!" And he spread out his wrinkled hands with a gesture that had a touch of pathos in it. "Times are indeed changed. I suppose the wars brought troubles everywhere."