He had turned away to resume his walk, but as he finished the sentence, he turned again towards the tree, and shook his finger at it, as if reproaching it for belonging to somebody else than himself. ‘Where are you going now?’ he asked, wheeling round upon me sharply, with a keen look in his magpie-eyes, as the French would call them, which hardly corresponded with the bluntness of his address. ‘I’m going to the Hall,’ I answered, turning away. ‘You’ll never get there that way. How are you to cross the river?’ ‘I don’t know. I’ve never been this way before.’ ‘You’ve been to the Hall before, then? Whom do you know there?’ ‘Mrs Wilson,’ I answered. ‘H’m! Ah! You know Mrs Wilson, do you? Nice woman, Mrs Wilson!’ He said this as if he meant the opposite. ‘Here,’ he went on--‘come with me. I’ll show you the way.’ I obeyed, and followed him along the bank of the stream. ‘What a curious bridge!’ I exclaimed, as we came in sight of an ancient structure lifted high in the middle on the point of a Gothic arch. ‘Yes, ain’t it? he said. ‘Curious? I should think so! And well it may be! It’s as old as the oak there at least. There’s a bridge now for a man like Sir Giles to call his own!’ ‘He can’t keep it though,’ I said, moralizing; for, in carrying on the threads of my stories, I had come to see that no climax could last for ever. ‘Can’t keep it! He could carry off every stone of it if he liked.’ ‘Then it wouldn’t be the bridge any longer.’ ‘You’re a sharp one,’ he said. ‘I don’t know,’ I answered, truly enough. I seemed to myself to be talking sense, that was all. ‘Well, I do. What do you mean by saying he couldn’t keep it?’ ‘It’s been a good many people’s already, and it’ll be somebody else’s some day,’ I replied. He did not seem to relish the suggestion, for he gave a kind of grunt, which gradually broke into a laugh as he answered, ‘Likely enough! likely enough!’ We had now come round to the end of the bridge, and I saw that it was far more curious than I had perceived before. ‘Why is it so narrow?’ I asked, wonderingly, for it was not three feet wide, and had a parapet of stone about three feet high on each side of it. ‘Ah!’ he replied, ‘that’s it, you see. As old as the hills. It was built, _this_ bridge was, before ever a carriage was made--yes, before ever a carrier’s cart went along a road. They carried everything then upon horses’ backs. They call this the pack-horse bridge. You see there’s room for the horses’ legs, and their loads could stick out over the parapets. That’s the way they carried everything to the Hall then. That was a few years before _you_ were born, young gentleman.’ ‘But they couldn’t get their legs--the horses, I mean--couldn’t get their legs through this narrow opening,’ I objected; for a flat stone almost blocked up each end.