The Archdeacon claimed that his house had stood at the end of the lane since the railways began shifting eager folk away from a countryside they had tired of looking at every day. He was a tall man whose height dwindled as he spoke. For his his words had nothing to catch onto; they were without bait. Of course his sermons attempted some weekly parade of moral sense before us on a Sunday but even when we inclined our heads thoughtfully this way and that, nothing remained in our minds. He was a man thus without residue, and of course it was this which made his home so open to the visitors. Visitors I have to say, whose life’s term was long finished, but somehow not quite finished with.