sister. She had no neighbours near her fit either
from education or rank to interfere in the conduct of her life,
excepting always Miss Le Smyrger. Miss Le Smyrger would have done
anything for her, including the whole management of her morals and
of the parsonage household, had Patience been content with such an
arrangement. But much as Patience had ever loved Miss Le Smyrger, she
was not content with this, and therefore she had been called on to put
forth a strong hand of her own. She had put forth this strong hand
early, and hence had come the character which I am attempting to
describe. But I must say on behalf of this girl that it was not only
over others that she thus exercised dominion. In acquiring that power
she had also acquired the much greater power of exercising rule over
herself.

But why should her father have been ignored in these family
arrangements? Perhaps it may almost suffice to say, that of all living
men her father was the man best conversant with the antiquities of the
county in which he lived. He was the Jonathan Oldbuck of Devonshire, and
especially of Dartmoor,--but without that decision of character which
enabled Oldbuck to keep his womenkind in some kind of subjection, and
probably enabled him also to see that his weekly bill did not pass their
proper limits. Our Mr. Oldbuck, of Oxney Colne, was sadly deficient in
these respects. As a parish pastor with but a small cure he did his duty
with sufficient energy to keep him, at any rate, from reproach. He was
kind and charitable to the poor, punctual in his services, forbearing
with the farmers around him, mild with his brother clergymen, and
indifferent to aught that bishop or archdeacon might think or say of
him. I do not name this latter attribute as a virtue, but as a fact. But
all these points were as nothing in the known character of Mr.
Woolsworthy, of Oxney Colne. He was the antiquarian of Dartmoor. That
was his line of life. It was in that capacity that he was known to the
Devonshire world; it was as such that he journeyed about with his humble
carpetbag, staying away from his parsonage a night or two at a time; it
was in that character that he received now and again stray visitors in
the single spare bedroom--not friends asked to see him and his girl
because of their friendship--but men who knew something as to this
buried stone, or that old land-mark. In all these things his daughter
let him have his own way, assisting and encouraging