A Pixy in Petticoats by John Trevena

Burrough was thirty-five, at which age most men have closed the romantic chapter of their lives. Most men also go forth as knight-errants to seek their adventures; Burrough had waited for his to come to him. He did not look his age. He was a handsome giant, slightly over six feet in height, and broad in proportion; his face was clean-shaven; his hair was fair; his eyes were blue. He was also clever -- too clever for the work-a-day world. He had taken classical honours; only a second-class because his health broke down. For some years he managed to maintain himself by contributing essays and reviews to various periodicals, until the atmosphere of Fleet Street became too much for his lungs, and, on the advice of an eminent specialist, he removed to Dartmoor, where he built a tiny cottage beside a gorge, in a dreary solitude upon the moor near the village of Lew.

He became well and strong in the bracing air, but with the return of health came also the sense of his loneliness. His cottage was quite apart from the village. It was surrounded by great boulders of granite, heather, gorse, bracken and whortleberries. He could not afford a housekeeper. A woman came out from the village twice a week to put the place in order. For the rest he was alone. He mended his own clothes and prepared his own meals.