gardens. It was a favourite suburb with well-to-do persons in the city,
rents were high and the builders had long been coveting and trying to
get possession of all this land which was "doing no good," in a
district where haunts of ancients peace were distinctly out of place
and not wanted. But the owner (aged ninety-eight) refused to sell.

Not only the builders, but his own sons and sons' sons had represented
to him that the rent he was getting for this property was nothing but
an old song compared to what it would bring in, if he would let it on a
long building lease. There was room there for thirty or forty good
houses with big gardens. And his answer invariably was: "It shan't be
touched! I was born in that house, and though I'm too old ever to go
and see it again, it must not be pulled down--not a brick of it, not a
tree cut, while I'm alive. When I'm gone you can do what you like,
because then I shan't know what you are doing."

My friends and relations, who were in occupation of the house, and
loved it, hoped that he would go on living many, many years: but alas!
the visit of the feared dark angel was to them and not to the old
owner, who was perhaps "too old to die"; the dear lady of the house and
its head was taken away and the family broken up, and from that day to
this I have never ventured to revisit that sweet spot, nor sought to
know what has been done to it.

At that time it used to be my week-end home, and on one of my early
visits I noticed the skull of an animal nailed to the wall about a yard
above the stable door. It was too high to be properly seen without
getting a ladder, and when the gardener told me that it was a bulldog's
skull, I thought no more about it.