mean, who came after Armitstead?'

'I had him once to dinner,' said the squire briefly; 'he made a false
quantity, and asked me to subscribe to the Church Missionary Society. I
haven't seen him since. He and the village have been at loggerheads
about the Institute, I believe. He wanted to turn out the dissenters.
Bateson came to me, and we circumvented him, of course. But the man's an
ass. Don't talk of him!'

Robert sighed a long sigh. Was all his work undone? It wrung his heart
to remember the opening of the Institute, the ardour of his boys. He
asked a few questions about individuals, but soon gave it up as
hopeless. The squire neither knew nor cared.

'And Mrs. Darcy?'

'My sister had tea in her thirtieth summer-house last Sunday,' remarked
the squire grimly. 'She wished me to communicate the fact to you and
Mrs. Elsmere. Also, that the worst novel of the century will be out in a
fortnight, and she trusts to you to see it well reviewed in all the
leading journals.'

Robert laughed, but it was not very easy to laugh. There was a sort of
ghastly undercurrent in the squire's sarcasms that effectually deprived
them of anything mirthful.

'And your book?'

'Is in abeyance. I shall bequeath you the manuscript in my will, to do
what you like with.'

'Squire!'

'Quite true! If you had stayed, I should have finished it, I suppose.
But after a certain age the toil of spinning cobwebs entirely out of his
own brain becomes too much for a man.'

It was the first thing of the sort that iron mouth had ever said to him.
Elsmere was painfully touched.

'You must not--you shall not give it up,' he urged. 'Publish the first
part alone, and ask me for any help you please.'

The squire shook his head.

'Let it be. Your paper in the _Nineteenth Century_ showed me that the
best thing I can do is to hand on my materials to you. Though I am not
sure that when you have got them you will make the best use of them. You
and Grey between you call yourselves Liberals, and imagine yourselves
reformers, and all the while you are doing nothing but playing into the
hands of the Blacks. All this theistic philosophy of yours only means so
much grist to their mill in the end.'

'They don't see it in that light themselves,' said Robert, smiling.

'No,' returned the squire, 'because most men are puzzle-heads. Why,' he
added, looking darkly at Robert, while the great head fell forward on
his breast in the familiar Murewell attitude, 'wh