o bar his claim. "There's many a slip between the cup and the lip"
is an old saying, and many a relation of a great noble is near the
succession of his honours, only to see them pass to some other branch
where least expected.

The present Duke, or to give him his full family name, William John
Arthur Charles James Cavendish-Bentinck, was a long way off the fifth
Duke, in the table of consanguinity, he had no trace of the Scott blood
in him, and was in fact only second cousin of his eccentric predecessor
in the title.

His father was Lieutenant-General A.C. Cavendish-Bentinck, whose
descent was through the third Duke, so that the two branches had to go
back nearly a hundred years to find a common ancestor. His birth took
place on December 28th, 1857, and it must have seemed then a remote
possibility that in less than five and twenty years he would succeed to
one of the proudest Dukedoms in the land, with the opportunities of a
royal alliance.

Two of the Duke's half-brothers were engaged in the South African war;
Lord Charles Bentinck was a Lieutenant in the 9th Lancers and was
slightly wounded in the siege of Mafeking; for his services he won a
medal and a brevet-majority. He was born in 1868 and was educated at
Eton; he married in 1897 a daughter of Mr. Charles Seymour Grenfell of
Taplow. In the East Midlands he has won considerable popularity as
Master of the Blankney Hunt.

Lord William Bentinck was a Captain in the 10th Hussars and showed his
ardour in the war by endeavouring to form a body of Colonial Mounted
Rifles.

Among the eccentricities laid to the charge of the old Duke it was said
that on his young heir going to visit him on one occasion at Welbeck,
he ordered him to stand in a corner of the room.

When in 1879 the old Duke passed away from his world of mysteries and
escapades, the heir was a Lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards. He was
not long in the Army, and when he came into the title there were too
many other engagements for him to attend to without troubling himself as
to the routine of military duty, though he kept up a connection with the
forces by becoming Lieutenant-Colonel of the Honourable Artillery
Company of London, Honorary Colonel of the 1st Lanarkshire Volunteer
Artillery, and of the 4th Battalion Sherwood Foresters Regiment.

Welbeck soon began to assume a new aspect under his regime. Gradually it
lost its appearance of a contractor's yard and looked like one of the
stately homes