Garsworth was one of those queer, old-fashioned villages which, owing to their isolated positions, yet retain the primitive simplicity of earlier ages. The nearest railway station, Duxby Junction, to which steam and electricity continually carried the news of the world, was fully twenty miles distant, so that in this out of-the-way village the rustics heard but little of the doings of the nations, being content to remain in a state of Arcadian ignorance as their forefathers had done before them. 

There was not even a stage-coach to Duxby, and the only means of communication was by the carriers' carts, which went weekly along the dusty high road, drawn lazily by their sleek horses. The nearest market town was Shunton, almost as quiet and primitive as Garsworth, and the sturdy farmers going there on market days sold their cattle and wheat, picked up such small items of news as had drifted thither from Duxby, then returned to their homes perfectly satisfied with life and with themselves. Well-to-do folks were these yeomen, for many rich farms lay hidden in the wide fen lands--farms which had descended from father to son through many generations, and as neither agrarian agitation nor vexed questions of rents had penetrated to this remote spot, they tilled their lands, looked up to their landlords, and pursued their monotonous lives in peace.

The village, built on a primitive plan, consisted of one long, wide street, with a similar one running crosswise to it, so that the little town was divided into four almost equal sections. Where the four roads met appeared a large open space doing duty as the village green, in the centre of which stood an antique stone cross with elaborate carvings thereon, much worn by time, said to have been erected by one Geoffrey Garsworth on his return from the third crusade. As a proof of this, there could be seen amid the carvings, representations of palm branches and scallop shells, both symbolical of eastern vegetation and pilgrim wanderings; but Dr. Larcher, the vicar of Garsworth--an ardent archaeologist--maintained that the cross had been placed there by the Cistercian monks, who once occupied a monastery near the village. The worthy vicar, being of a somewhat polemical nature, was wont to wax warm on the subject, and held strong opinions as to the cross and the church, which opinions he was willing enough to impart to any curious stranger who might chance to have antiquarian leanings.

And a beautiful old church it was, of irregular architecture, with heavy stone pillars supporting both round and pointed arches of the Norman Romanesque style, remarkably fine stained glass 

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