in all his unadornment, that it
was which so seldom pre-possessed the many who had never heard of
Jenning's strict character and stern integrity. The face was a sallow
face, peaked towards the nose, with head and chin receding; lit withal
by small protrusive eyes, so constructed, that the whites all round were
generally visible, giving them a strange and staring look; elevated
eye-brows; not an inch of whisker, but all shaved sore right up to the
large and prominent ear; and lank black, hair, not much of it, scantily
thatching all smooth. Then his arms, oscillating as he walked (as if the
pendulum by which that rigid man was made to go his regular routine),
were much too long for symmetry: and altogether, to casual view, Mr.
Jennings must acknowledge to a supercilious, yet sneaking air--which
charity has ere now been kind enough to think a conscious rectitude
towards man, and a soft-going humility with God.

When the bailiff takes his round about the property, as we see him now,
he is mounted--to say he rides would convey far too equestrian a
notion--he is mounted on a rough-coated, quiet, old, white
shooting-pony; the saddle strangely girded on with many bands about the
belly, the stirrups astonishingly short, and straps never called upon to
diminish that long whity-brown interval between shoe and trowser: Mr.
Jennings sits his steed with nose aloft, and a high perch in the
general, somewhat loosely, and, had the pony been a Bucephalus rather
than a Rozinante, not a little perilously. Simon is jogging hitherwards
toward Roger Acton, as he digs the land-drain across this marshy meadow:
let us see how it fares now with our poor hero.

Occupation--yes, duteous occupation--has exerted its wholsesome
influences, and, thank God! Roger is himself again. He has been very
sorry half the day, both for the wicked feelings of the morning, and
that still more wicked theft--a bad business altogether, he cannot bear
to think of it; the gold was none of his, whosesoever it might be--he
ought not to have touched it--vexed he did, but cannot help it now; it
is well he lost it too, for ill-got money never came to any good:
though, to be sure, if he could only get it honestly, money would make a
man of him.

I am not sure of that, Roger, it may be so sometimes; but, in my
judgment, money has unmade more men than made them.

"How now, Acton, is not this drain dug yet! You have been about it much
too long, sir; I shall fine you for this