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not matter. We must take this world as it is -as indeed we help to make it; for Humanity is a junior partner in the firm of Creation. If men are disappointed, it is usually their own fault. Either their expectations are impossible, or they do not go the right way to obtain their fulfilment.

Squire Silchester paced up and down, well aware that he would be much in the way if he approached too near the sacred chamber, and meditated on the possible future of the Silchester race. He is a man of curious ideas. This indeed is a family inheritance, his ancestors having always had a quaint cantankerous temper. There is an intellectual and social Toryism, likely to exist if even political Toryism is washed away by the fast-rising flood of new opinions, all different and all absurd. There is a belief which, though possibly ill-founded, is altogether indestructible in the human race -that it is well to be not only a man, but also a gentleman. This creed of the minority held

Squire Silchester, and it smote him strongly now that he expected a young squire to educate For he saw, only too clearly, what harm was being done by the many young gentlemen of the age who were trying to correct the errors of all past ages. The Squire did not want a boy who would begin in his teens to reform the world. The Silchesters had from time immemorial been lords of their own village, and lovers of their own folk. As usually occurs in a county family of long descent, there had been Tories among them and Whigs also; and in the picture gallery were portraits of twin brothers, of whom one had fought by the side of Falkland, and the other by that of Hampden. But whatsoever the political opinions of the Silchesters, they were all loyal to their home and their village-all glad to return from the arena of vain strife to their ancestral corner of Devon. Our Squire's life had been singularly uneventful.

He had stayed at home and hunted the country for the last twelve years, since his

father's death-following in this regard his father's example. The old gentleman was

close on eighty when he died, and his only child was only twenty-three. This happened in curious fashion. John Silchester the elder had in his hot youth met with a Miss Barbara Restormel, a Cornish lady of birth and beauty, but twice his age-for he was about eighteen. He fell madly in love with her

"This is the way that boys begin "

and she very wisely declined to have anything to say to him. He, in a furious rage, swore he would slay the man who dared to marry her: she rendered this threat ineffective by choosing, to the amazement of two counties, a learned pious short-sighted curate, as much older than herself as she was older than the Squire. The Rev. David Dallas was a first-class mathematician, and a theologian so erudite that his vicar often remonstrated with him on the difficult character of his explanations of Scrip

ture; but he was the last man you would expect to win a splendid woman in her prime -though these last men often do it. He was tall and thin and sallow; he stooped; he coughed; he was absurdly absent; he could not remember a name, or a face, or the day of the month, or the day of the week. But Barbara Restormel, a superb and vigorous woman, saw in this man something which she saw not in the young peers and squires who threw themselves at her pretty (if rather ample) feet; and she married him three years after she had refused Squire Silchester of Silchester; and the Squire, whose bark was far worse than his bite, took the generous revenge of presenting him to the family living of Silchestereight hundred a year, and a glebe of about five hundred acres.

Here the rector lived comfortably and pleasantly, dining full oft with the man who had menaced him with death, drinking his port and using his library. Here the rectoress

was also prosperous and happy, the very soul of the village, the unfailing guide and friend of all who needed guidance and friendship. She had not married her parson for nothing. His awkward form concealed a noble nature, strangely capable of influencing others with which it came in contact. He influenced Squire Silchester, a man reported invincibly obstinate. He tamed the unkempt rebellious schoolchildren, with whom the schoolmaster had done no good, though he decimated the Squire's birch plantations. He kept in genial awe the frequenters of wild solitary taverns, where poaching and smuggling were the most trivial amusements ever designed. He was a magnetic man. Such men are of immense use, when they go aright. The Rev. David Dallas seldom went very far wrong.

About two years after marriage, Mrs. Dallas had a daughter, who was also named Barbara. The Squire was intensely fond of this infant iota. Tacitly he had vowed to himself that

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