ment had his will with
Elsmere. He had found a great piquancy in this shaping of a mind more
intellectually eager and pliant than any he had yet come across among
younger men; perpetual food too, for his sense of irony, in the
intellectual contradictions, wherein Elsmere's developing ideas and
information were now, according to the squire, involving him at every
turn.

'His religious foundations are gone already, if he did but know it,' Mr.
Wendover grimly remarked to himself one day about this time, 'but he
will take so long finding it out that the results are not worth
speculating on.'

Cynically assured, therefore, at bottom of his own power with this
ebullient nature, the squire was quite prepared to make external
concessions, or, as we have said, to pay his price. It annoyed him that
when Elsmere would press for allotment land, or a new institute, or a
better supply of water for the village, it was not open to him merely to
give _carte blanche_, and refer his petitioner to Henslowe. Robert's
opinion of Henslowe, and Henslowe's now more cautious but still
incessant hostility to the rector, were patent at last even to the
squire. The situation was worrying and wasted time. It must be changed.

So one morning he met Elsmere with a bundle of letters in his hand,
calmly informed him that Henslowe had been sent about his business, and
that it would be a kindness if Mr. Elsmere would do him the favour of
looking through some applications for the vacant post just received.

Elsmere, much taken by surprise, felt at first as it was natural for an
over-sensitive, over-scrupulous man to feel. His enemy had been given
into his hand, and instead of victory he could only realise that he had
brought a man to ruin.

'He has a wife and children,' he said quickly, looking at the squire.

'Of course I have pensioned him,' replied the squire impatiently;
'otherwise I imagine he would be hanging round our necks to the end of
the chapter.'

There was something in the careless indifference of the tone which sent
a shiver through Elsmere. After all, this man had served the squire for
fifteen years, and it was not Mr. Wendover who had much to complain of.

No one with a conscience could have held out a finger to keep Henslowe
in his post. But though Elsmere took the letters and promised to give
them his best attention, as soon as he got home he made himself
irrationally miserable over the matter. It was not his fault that, from
th