could wipe them off."

"There's nothing more easy," returned John in his free manner. "Get the
whitewash brush to work. The insolvent court has its friendly doors ever
open."

The colour came into the face of Lionel. A Verner _there!_ He quietly
shook his head. "I dare say I shall find a way of paying some time, if
the people will only wait."

"Sibylla helped you to a good part of the score, didn't she? People are
saying so. Just like her!"

"When I complain of my wife, it will be quite time enough for other
people to begin," said Lionel. "When I married Sibylla, I took her with
her virtues and her faults; and I am quite ready to defend both."

"All right. I'd rather you had the right of defending them than I," said
incorrigible John. "Look here, Lionel, I got you up here to-day to talk
about the estate. Will you take the management of it?"

"Of this estate?" replied Lionel, scarcely understanding.

"Deuce a bit of any other could I offer you. Things are all at sixes and
sevens already. They are chaos; they are purgatory. That's our word out
yonder, Lionel, to express the ultimatum of badness. Matiss comes and
bothers; the tenants, one and another, come and bother; Roy comes and
bothers. What with it all, I'm fit to bar the outer doors. Roy, you
know, thought I should put him into power again! No, no, Mr. Roy; Fred
might have done it, but I never will. I have paid him well for the
services he rendered me; but put him into power--no. Altogether, things
are getting into inextricable confusion; I can't look to them, and I
want a manager. Will you take it, Lionel? I'll give you five hundred a
year."

The mention of the sum quite startled Lionel. It was far more than he
should have supposed John Massingbird would offer to any manager. Matiss
would do it for a fourth. _Should_ he take it?

He sat, twirling his wine-glass in his fingers. There was a soreness of
spirit to get over, and it could not be done all in a moment. To become
a servant (indeed it was no better) on the land that had once been his;
that ought to be his now, by the law of right--a servant to John
Massingbird! Could he bend to it? John smoked, and sat watching him.

He thought of the position of his wife; he thought of the encumbrance on
his mother: he thought of his brother Jan, and what _he_ had done; he
thought of his own very unsatisfactory prospects. Was _this_ putting his
shoulder to the wheel, as he had resolved to do, thus to hesitate on