turned, and the country going to the dogs. It was but
natural and human that he should pray for the survival of the form of
things which he believed in and knew, the form of things bequeathed to
him, and embodied in the salutary words "Horace Pendyce." It was not his
habit to welcome new ideas. A new idea invading the country of the
Squire's mind was at once met with a rising of the whole population, and
either prevented from landing, or if already on shore instantly taken
prisoner. In course of time the unhappy creature, causing its squeaks
and groans to penetrate the prison walls, would be released from sheer
humaneness and love of a quiet life, and even allowed certain privileges,
remaining, however, "that poor, queer devil of a foreigner." One day, in
an inattentive moment, the natives would suffer it to marry, or find that
in some disgraceful way it had caused the birth of children unrecognised
by law; and their respect for the accomplished fact, for something that
already lay in the past, would then prevent their trying to unmarry it,
or restoring the children to an unborn state, and very gradually they
would tolerate this intrusive brood. Such was the process of Mr.
Pendyce's mind. Indeed, like the spaniel John, a dog of conservative
instincts, at the approach of any strange thing he placed himself in the
way, barking and showing his teeth; and sometimes truly he suffered at
the thought that one day Horace Pendyce would no longer be there to bark.
But not often, for he had not much imagination.

All the morning he had been working at that old vexed subject of Common
Rights on Worsted Scotton, which his father had fenced in and taught him
once for all to believe was part integral of Worsted Skeynes. The matter
was almost beyond doubt, for the cottagers--in a poor way at the time of
the fencing, owing to the price of bread--had looked on apathetically
till the very last year required by law to give the old Squire squatter's
rights, when all of a sudden that man, Peacock's father, had made a gap
in the fence and driven in beasts, which had reopened the whole
unfortunate question. This had been in '65, and ever since there had
been continual friction bordering on a law suit. Mr. Pendyce never for a
moment allowed it to escape his mind that the man Peacock was at the
bottom of it all; for it was his way to discredit all principles as
ground of action, and to refer everything to facts and persons; except,
indee