The Trumpet-Major by Thomas Hardy

At this time in the history of Overcombe one solitary newspaper / occasionally found its way into the village. It was lent by the / postmaster at Budmouth (who, in some mysterious way, got it for nothing / through his connexion with the mail) to Mr. Derriman at the Hall, by whom / it was handed on to Mrs. Garland when it was not more than a fortnight / old. Whoever remembers anything about the old farmer-squire will, of / course, know well enough that this delightful privilege of reading / history in long columns was not accorded to the Widow Garland for / nothing. It was by such ingenuous means that he paid her for her / daughter's occasional services in reading aloud to him and making out his / accounts, in which matters the farmer, whose guineas were reported to / touch five figures -- some said more -- was not expert.

Mrs. Martha Garland, as a respectable widow, occupied a twilight rank / between the benighted villagers and the well-informed gentry, and kindly / made herself useful to the former as letter-writer and reader, and / general translator from the printing tongue. It was not without / satisfaction that she stood at her door of an evening, newspaper in hand, / with three or four cottagers standing round, and poured down their open / throats any paragraph that she might choose to select from the stirring / ones of the period. When she had done with the sheet Mrs. Garland passed / it on to the miller, the miller to the grinder, and the grinder to the / grinder's boy, in whose hands it became subdivided into half pages, / quarter pages, and irregular triangles, and ended its career as a paper / cap, a flagon bung, or a wrapper for his bread and cheese.

Notwithstanding his compact with Mrs. Garland, old Mr. Derriman kept the / paper so long, and was so chary of wasting his man's time on a merely / intellectual errand, that unless she sent for the journal it seldom / reached her hands. Anne was always her messenger. The arrival of the / soldiers led Mrs. Garland to despatch her daughter for it the day after / the party; and away she went in her hat and pelisse, in a direction at / right angles to that of the encampment on the hill.

Walking across the fields for the distance of a mile or two, she came out / upon the high-road by a wicket-gate. On the other side of the way was / the entrance to what at first sight looked like a neglected meadow, the / gate being a rotten one, without a bottom rail, and broken-down palings / lying on each side. The dry hard mud of the opening was marked with / several horse and cow tracks, that had been half obliterated by fifty / score sheep tracks, surcharged with the tracks of a man and a dog. Beyond / this geological record appeared a carriage-road, nearly grown over with / grass, which Anne followed. It descended by a gentle slope, dived under / dark-rinded elm and chestnut trees, and conducted her on till the hiss of / a waterfall and the sound of the sea became audible, when it took a bend / round a swamp of fresh watercress and brooklime that had once been a fish / pond. Here the grey, weather-worn front of a building edged from behind / the trees. It was Oxwell Hall, once the seat of a family now extinct, / and of late years used as a farmhouse.

Benjamin Derriman, who owned the crumbling place, had originally been / only the occupier and tenant-farmer of the fields around. His wife had / brought him a small fortune, and during the growth of their only son / there had been a partition of the Oxwell estate, giving the farmer, now a / widower, the opportunity of acquiring the building and a small portion of / the land attached on exceptionally low terms. But two years after the / purchase the boy died, and Derriman's existence was paralyzed forthwith. / It was said that since that event he had devised the house and fields to / a distant female relative, to keep them out of the hands of his detested / nephew; but this was not certainly known.

The hall was as interesting as mansions in a state of declension usually / are, as the excellent county history showed. That popular work in folio / contained an old plate dedicated to the last scion of the original / owners, from which drawing it appeared that in 1750, the date of / publication, the windows were covered with little scratches like black / flashes of lightning; that a horn of hard smoke came out of each of the / twelve chimneys; that a lady and a lap-dog stood on the lawn in a / strenuously walking position; and a substantial cloud and nine flying / birds of no known species hung over the trees to the north-east.