Thomas Hearne was a native of Restharrow, a stonemason, who, after spending his active years working for a firm of builders in a distant part of the county, had in his old age drifted back to the home of his childhood. Hearne had in his day been a first-class workman with experience, skill, and that something beyond skill which is a compound of taste and imagination. His firm had valued his services. When there had been a difficult or a delicate job to be done, it had been given to Hearne as a matter of course. Specimens of his workmanship stood, and some must still be standing, all over that countryside, in the renovated stonework of restored churches, the arches of bridges, stone piers at entrance gates, and on the facades of mansions. He had in his day instructed two generations of apprentices.
But by the 1880s Hearne's day was over. Physically he was past his prime, though still hale and hearty and capable of a full day's work at his bench in the shop, or of walking, toolbag on shoulder, three or four miles or more to an outside job. But times and ideas had changed and his fastidious, painstaking methods were out of date. Speed had become more important than craftsmanship and the artistry which aimed at nothing less than perfection was little esteemed. The more important jobs were being given to younger men, smart fellows who knew all the latest dodges for saving time and materials. Young workmen, apprentices but yesterday, would take upon themselves to instruct him in his craft. It had been all very well in his day, they told him, to go in for all this undercutting and finishing, but who was going to wait or to pay for it now? and the kindly disposed would bring their mallets and chisels over to Hearne's bench and show him what they called the tricks of the trade.
But Hearne had no use for tricks. He preferred to work as he had been taught to work, leisurely and lovingly, striving always to approach as nearly as possible to his own vision of perfection. For a few more years he continued to use the bench which for more than a quarter of a century had been known as "Hearne's", working steadily at such jobs as were given him, consulted by others less often than formerly and respected less, but never abating his own self-respect. In his home village he was liked and respected as a man with a good trade in his hands, who had a good wife and a pleasant, cheerful cottage, and there were some who envied him those blessings, for it was a poor agricultural neighbourhood.
This state of things might have lasted until his working life had ended in the natural way had not his old employer, the head of the firm, died and his son, a young man with modern ideas and a determination to increase his business, come into possession. The firm was reorganized, the latest and cheapest methods were instituted, and in the new scheme there was no place for Hearne as leading mason. He was called into the office and told that a younger and smarter man was to have his bench in the shop. The young builder was about to add that he had no idea of cutting adrift an old servant like Hearne, that as long as he was able to work there would still be a job in the yard for him, an old man's job with an old man's wages, but, before he could speak further, Hearne took him up sharply." Is anything wrong with my work ?" he demanded. His young employer hummed and hawed , for he had no wish to hurt Hearne's feelings. "Well, since you ask me," he said, "I'11 say that you're a bit too finicking. You put in too much time on a job to justify your wage in these competitive times."
"But look at my work!" cried Hearne. "Look at that east window tracery in Tisley Church, and the new keystone I let into the Norman arch at Bradbury, and that bridge over the Ouse at Biddingfold; masterpieces all of them, though I say so myself. Other jobs, too. You've only got to take a walk in the cool of the evening and use your eyes and wherever you go in any direction you'll find something worth seeing with my mark upon it," and this he said, not pleadingly, but rather by way of a challenge, and as he spoke he stretched out his arms as though to call the whole neighbourhood as witness.
The young builder was in a difficult position. "I know all that," he said. "I'm not denying you've been a good mason, a first-rate man in your day. But those were the days of my father and grandfather and those times have gone, the world's on the move, and the truth of the matter, though I'm sorry to say it, is that you do your work too well. You take too much time over it, and that doesn't pay in these days. We've been out of pocket by you for years."
Hearne's fine dark eyes flamed and his long, thin old figure shook with rage. "Too much time over it!" he shouted. "Too much time! And how do you think good work has always been done? By hurrying? By scamping? By begrudging a stroke here or a moment there? Look at the churches round here. Bloxham for length, Adderbury for strength, and Kings Sutton for beauty! Think they grew out of the ground like mushrooms? Or were flung together by slick youngsters such as yours? Let me tell you, young feller-me-lad, I learnt my craft from those who made a craft of it, not a come-day-go-day means of putting a bit of bread in their mouths, and I ain't going to alter my ways and disgrace my upbringing for anybody. I'll make up my time-sheet and you can put one of your slick youngsters at my bench, for I've done with the firm. And this I'll say before I've done with you for ever: the work of my hands will be standing to bear witness for me when you and your like are frizzling in the spot old Nick keeps specially hot for bad workmen!"
Old Hearne neither starved nor entered the workhouse. For some years longer he made a poor livelihood by replacing roof tiles, building pigsties, setting grates, repairing walls, sweeping chimneys, or any other odd job which could be regarded, however remotely, as included in his own trade. When his wife died he left the village near the town where he had worked and returned to his native Restharrow, where he still owned the cottage in which he had been born, and there carried on his humble occupation of jobbing mason. On chimney-sweeping days he was grimy, but, at other times, he went about his work in the immemorial garb of his craft, corduroy trousers scrubbed white, or whitish, white apron girded up round the waist for walking, billycock hat and nondescript coat powdered with stone and mortar dust. He had become, as they said, as thin as a rake, and his fine dark eyes, into which the fire of fanaticism was creeping, had become so sunken that his forehead looked like that of a skull. By the time I first remembered him, he had become queer in his ways. Harvesters going to the fields at daybreak would meet him far from home, wild-eyed and wild-haired and dew-soaked. When asked where he had been he would whisper confidentially that he had been out all night, guarding some church or other building, but who had set him to guard them or what they were to be guarded against he would not say. Otherwise he talked more freely than he had been used to do and with many a "he sez" and "sez I" he would relate the story of his last interview with his former employer to anyone he could buttonhole Everybody in the parish had heard the story, though few with sympathy, for it seemed to most of his listeners but an instance of a man throwing away a good job in a fit of temper, and, to save themselves from a third or fourth recital, when they saw Hearne in the distance they would turn aside to avoid a meeting. The more kindly spoke of him as poor old Tom Hearne", the less kindly as "that tiresome old fool", and the children would tease him by calling after him, "Tom! you're slow! You're too slow for a funeral! Old Slowcoach! Old Slowcoach!"