Forty years later I wrote to her , across the leagues of land and sea that divided us , and told her that Jasper Dale was dead ; and I reminded her of her old promise and asked its fulfilment . In reply she sent me the written love story of Jasper Dale and Alice Reade . Now , when Alice sleeps under the whispering elms of the old Carlisle churchyard , beside the husband of her youth , that story may be given , in all its old-time sweetness , to the world . CHAPTER XXV . THE LOVE STORY OF THE AWKWARD MAN -LRB- Written by the Story Girl -RRB- Jasper Dale lived alone in the old homestead which he had named Golden Milestone . In Carlisle this giving one 's farm a name was looked upon as a piece of affectation ; but if a place must be named why not give it a sensible name with some meaning to it ? Why Golden Milestone , when Pinewood or Hillslope or , if you wanted to be very fanciful , Ivy Lodge , might be had for the taking ? He had lived alone at Golden Milestone since his mother 's death ; he had been twenty then and he was close upon forty now , though he did not look it . But neither could it be said that he looked young ; he had never at any time looked young with common youth ; there had always been something in his appearance that stamped him as different from the ordinary run of men , and , apart from his shyness , built up an intangible , invisible barrier between him and his kind . He had lived all his life in Carlisle ; and all the Carlisle people knew of or about him -- although they thought they knew everything -- was that he was painfully , abnormally shy . He never went anywhere except to church ; he never took part in Carlisle 's simple social life ; even with most men he was distant and reserved ; as for women , he never spoke to or looked at them ; if one spoke to him , even if she were a matronly old mother in Israel , he was at once in an agony of painful blushes . He had no friends in the sense of companions ; to all outward appearance his life was solitary and devoid of any human interest . He had no housekeeper ; but his old house , furnished as it had been in his mother 's lifetime , was cleanly and daintily kept . The quaint rooms were as free from dust and disorder as a woman could have had them . This was known , because Jasper Dale occasionally had his hired man 's wife , Mrs. Griggs , in to scrub for him . On the morning she was expected he betook himself to woods and fields , returning only at night-fall . During his absence Mrs. Griggs was frankly wont to explore the house from cellar to attic , and her report of its condition was always the same -- `` neat as wax . '' To be sure , there was one room that was always locked against her , the west gable , looking out on the garden and the hill of pines beyond . But Mrs. Griggs knew that in the lifetime of Jasper Dale 's mother it had been unfurnished . She supposed it still remained so , and felt no especial curiosity concerning it , though she always tried the door .
Jasper Dale had a good farm , well cultivated ; he had a large garden where he worked most of his spare time in summer ; it was supposed that he read a great deal , since the postmistress declared that he was always getting books and magazines XXXXX mail .
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