probably found its way into the private museum of an antiquarian.
The presence of these relics, although supplying no direct evidence, supports a belief held in the district that the garden was once a burial ground, connected with a Roman Catholic Mission that carried on its good work at Scholes Farm, close by. Colour is given to this story by the tradition that long underground passages once extended from Scholes Farm to the garden, and that the passage was used in those bad old days when Merry England was torn with religious persecutions.
At any rate, there the cottage stands to this day, wrapped in its glamour of a lost history, looking pleasantly out into the world, and caring very little for the attacks of its enemies, old Time and the elements.
It is about 65 years since the cottage took part in an important series of events connected with the story of a man’s life related in this book.
Mr. Thomas Seddon, a member of one of the oldest farming Lancashire families, was headmaster of the Eccleston Hill Grammar School. Miss Jean Lindsay, a native of Annan, a town in Dumfrieshire, also the descendant of farming people, was mistress of the denominational school. There was not room for two establishments of that kind at Eccleston, and it was not long before very keen rivalry sprang up, the bachelor master competing with the maiden mistress. The heads of the establishments met at public functions in the town, and were often called upon to act together, and even work together, when movements were on foot for charitable purposes, or for the advancement of the community’s interests. By and by, the rivals found that they met more frequently. More occasions seemed to arise, somehow, for consultations. Circumstances over which, of course, they had absolutely no control whatever, threw them together, led them to take pleasant walks along country lanes, brought about mutual confidences, and forged a bond of sympathy. The old folk of the village smiled and nodded and looked wise, because it was the old, old story again; and when it was announced that the master and the “school-m’am” had decided not only to roam the lanes and roads
