“I beg pardon, Master Henry, I was just coming to that. But when I say how he passed away his time--to be sure we know ’ow intent he was in rummaging and ransacking out all the ’istry of the neighbourhood and the number of things he’d managed to collect together--well, it was spoke of for miles round as Baxter’s Museum, and many a time when he might be in the mood, and I might have an hour to spare, have he showed me his pieces of pots and what not, going back by his account to the times of the ancient Romans. However, you know more about that than what I do, Master Henry: only what I was a-going to say was this, as know what he might and interesting as he might be in his talk, there was something about the man--well, for one thing, no one ever remember to see him in church nor yet chapel at service-time. And that made talk. Our rector he never come in the house but once. ‘Never ask me what the man said’: that was all anybody could ever get out of _him_. Then how did he spend his nights, particularly about this season of the year? Time and again the labouring men’d meet him coming back as they went out to their work, and he’d pass ’em by without a word, looking, they says, like someone straight out of the asylum. They see the whites of his eyes all round. He’d have a fish-basket with him, that they noticed, and he always come the same road. And the talk got to be that he’d made himself some business, and that not the best kind--well, not so far from where you was at seven o’clock this evening, sir.