But Cornerstone is memorable in another way not recorded in my school note-book. The Rectory had at one time been haunted by two ghosts. One was a former Rector with a wooden leg, who every night at the midnight hour came stumping down the cellar steps to fetch himself beer. I like to think that he was the “decently unconcerned” one, who had found out his mistake. The other was a lady, and an illustrious one: no less than Amy Robsart. How it came to pass that Amy (who, according to Sir Walter, lived “on the frontiers of Devon” and was murdered at Cumnor) haunted a Norfolk Rectory, you must ask Mr. Andrew Lang. Sir Walter never let history or geography stand in his way, and one would not condemn a ghost on his evidence. There she was; she was known as Mistress Amy, and she walked about at the midnight hour _in a silk dress that rustled_. The Rector for the time being no doubt regarded this strangely assorted couple of incorporeal hereditaments with decent unconcern, but no servant would stay in the house. I think it was my host who put an end to the servile war by importing some Breton lasses who spoke no word of English. As it was impossible that any villager should forewarn them, they were not on the look out: or perchance the ghosts were only “Doomed for a certain term to walk the night” and the term had expired. Certainly the plague ceased, and the confidence of the village was restored. Thenceforth servants were plentiful. That veritable history is not in my note-book: there is little in it of the slightest interest: there is no record of the human element in our inspecting life; no record of the constant succession of anxious managers, distracted teachers, half-distracted and half-delighted children, whose absorbing interest in the day’s work was a constant reproach to me. The teachers alone would fill a volume: “with your remembered faces, Dear men and women, whom I sought and slew,” as an Inspector-poet[14] once sang--the note-books record only your names with a few dry official details; but memory brings back much more. It was a hard life for the pioneers in the back-woods of Arcady in the early ’seventies. You laboured, and other men have entered into your labours. Ill-paid, often ill-housed; worried by inspectors; worried by managers and managers’ wives; worried by parents, and worried by children, who came to school as a personal favour, and, if affronted, stayed away for a week, you served your generation. There can be few, if any, still at work whom I knew in Arcady thirty years ago; but as I look through these books I see the names of many whom all men honoured, and who reaped a full reward in the affectionate gratitude of the children.