his hands. It would, indeed, have been unwarrantable to expect
a man of his birth, breeding, and education to question the machine of
which he was himself a wheel.

He had dropped, therefore, at the age of twenty-six, insensibly, on the
death of an uncle, into the family living at Worsted Skeynes. He had
been there ever since. It was a constant and natural grief to him that
on his death the living would go neither to his eldest nor his second
son, but to the second son of his elder brother, the Squire. At the age
of twenty-seven he had married Miss Rose Twining, the fifth daughter of a
Huntingdonshire parson, and in less than eighteen years begotten ten
children, and was expecting the eleventh, all healthy and hearty like him
self. A family group hung over the fireplace in the study, under the
framed and illuminated text, "Judge not, that ye be not judged," which he
had chosen as his motto in the first year of his cure, and never seen any
reason to change. In that family group Mr. Barter sat in the centre with
his dog between his legs; his wife stood behind him, and on both sides
the children spread out like the wings of a fan or butterfly. The bills
of their schooling were beginning to weigh rather heavily, and he
complained a good deal; but in principle he still approved of the habit
into which he had got, and his wife never complained of anything.

The study was furnished with studious simplicity; many a boy had been,
not unkindly, caned there, and in one place the old Turkey carpet was
rotted away, but whether by their tears or by their knees, not even Mr.
Barter knew. In a cabinet on one side of the fire he kept all his
religious books, many of them well worn; in a cabinet on the other side
he kept his bats, to which he was constantly attending; a fishing-rod and
a gun-case stood modestly in a corner. The archway between the drawers of
his writing-table held a mat for his bulldog, a prize animal, wont to lie
there and guard his master's legs when he was writing his sermons. Like
those of his dog, the Rector's good points were the old English virtues
of obstinacy, courage, intolerance, and humour; his bad points, owing to
the circumstances of his life, had never been brought to his notice.

When, therefore, he found himself alone with Gregory Vigil, he approached
him as one dog will approach another, and came at once to the matter in
hand.

"It's some time since I had the pleasure of meeting you, Mr. Vig