IN THE MATTER OF BLINKHAMPTON 248
XX. THE TRISTRAM WAY--A SPECIMEN 264
XXI. THE PERSISTENCE OF BLENT 279
XXII. AN INSULT TO THE BLOOD 296
XXIII. A DECREE OF BANISHMENT 312
XXIV. AFTER THE END OF ALL 328
XXV. THERE'S THE LADY TOO! 342
XXVI. A BUSINESS CALL 358
XXVII. BEFORE TRANSLATION 375
XXVIII. THE CAT AND THE BELL 391
XXIX. THE CURMUDGEON 407
XXX. TILL THE NEXT GENERATION 420

I

A SUPPRESSED PASSAGE

Mr Jenkinson Neeld was an elderly man of comfortable private means; he
had chambers in Pall Mall, close to the Imperium Club, and his short
stoutish figure, topped by a chubby spectacled face, might be seen
entering that dignified establishment every day at lunch time, and also
at the hour of dinner on the evenings when he had no invitation
elsewhere. He had once practised at the Bar, and liked to explain that
he had deserted his profession for the pursuit of literature. He did
not, however, write on his own account; he edited. He would edit
anything provided there was no great public demand for an edition of it.
Regardless of present favor, he appealed to posterity--as gentlemen with
private means are quite entitled to do. Perhaps he made rather high
demands on posterity; but that was his business--and its. At any rate
his taste was curious and his conscience acute. He was very minute and
very scrupulous, very painstaking and very discreet, in the exercise of
his duties. Posterity may perhaps like these qualities in an editor of
memoirs and diaries; for such were Mr Neeld's favorite subjects.
Sometimes he fell into a sore struggle between curiosity and discretion,
having impulses in himself which he forbore to attribute to posterity.

He was in just such a fix now--so he thought to himself--as he perused
the manuscript before him. It was the Journal of his deceased friend
Josiah Cholderton, sometime Member of Parliament (in the Liberal
interest) for the borough of Baxton in Yorkshire, Commercial Delegate to
the Congress of Munich in '64, and Inventor of the Hygroxeric Method of
Dressing Wool. No wonder posterity was to be interested in Cholderton!
Yet at