nce to other people or keep
their wives and children in rags. I will do anything for you if I
find the place well conducted; but I warn you that I will have no
drunkenness. A man who, to my knowledge, gets drunk twice, will not get
drunk a third time in this parish, and if you let men get drunk here it
is your fault as much as theirs. Now we understand each other."

Things once placed on a satisfactory footing, the Squire had but little
more trouble, and it soon came to be understood that he was not to be
trifled with, and that Crowswood was no longer a place for the idle or
shiftless. Two or three of the farmers left at the termination of their
year, but better men took their places, and John Thorndyke, having
settled matters to his satisfaction, now began to attend more to other
affairs. He had been, when he first came back, welcomed with great
heartiness by all the gentry of the neighborhood; his father had been a
popular man, and young Thorndyke had been regarded as a pleasant young
fellow, and would in any case have been welcomed, if only because
Crowswood had become a nuisance to the whole district. It was, indeed,
a sort of rendezvous for poachers and bad characters, it was more than
suspected that gangs of thieves and burglars made it their headquarters,
and that even highwaymen found it a convenient and quiet resort.

Thus, then, the transformation effected within a few months of Mr.
Thorndyke's return caused general and lively satisfaction, and a year
later he was put on the Commission of the Peace, and became one of the
most regular attendants at the Bench of Magistrates. Reluctantly as
he had taken up his present position, he found it, as time went on, a
pleasant one. He had not been conscious before that time hung somewhat
heavily on his hands, but here he had duties to perform and ample
employment. His nature was naturally somewhat a masterful one, and
both as a magistrate and a landlord he had scope and power of action.
Occasionally he went up to London, always driving his gig, with a pair
of fast trotting horses, and was known to the frequenters of the
coffee houses chiefly patronized by country gentlemen. Altogether, John
Thorndyke became quite a notable person in the district, and men were
inclined to congratulate themselves upon the fact that he, and not the
Indian officer, his brother, had come into the estate.

The idea of an old Indian officer in those days was that he was almost
of necessity an