of regret to him that so much good hot anger should
be wasted, and that he could not have his will of his disobedient
son while it lasted. He might, no doubt, have written himself,
but to have done so would not have suited him. Even in his anger
he could not have written to his son without using the ordinary
terms of affection, and in his anger he could not bring himself to
use those terms. "You will find that I shall be of the same mind
to-morrow,--exactly," he said to his wife. "I have resolved about it
long since; and it is not likely that I shall change in a day." Then
he went out, about his parish, intending to continue to think of his
son's iniquity, so that he might keep his anger hot,--red hot. Then
he remembered that the evening would come, and that he would say his
prayers; and he shook his head in regret,--in a regret of which he
was only half conscious, though it was very keen, and which he did
not attempt to analyse,--as he reflected that his rage would hardly
be able to survive that ordeal. How common with us it is to repine
that the devil is not stronger over us than he is.

The archdeacon, who was a very wealthy man, had purchased a property
at Plumstead, contiguous to the glebe-land, and had thus come to
exercise in the parish the double duty of rector and squire. And
of this estate in Barsetshire, which extended beyond the confines
of Plumstead into the neighbouring parish of Eiderdown, and which
comprised also an outlying farm in the parish of Stogpingum,--Stoke
Pinguium would have been the proper name had not barbarous Saxon
tongues clipped it of its proper proportions,--he had always intended
that his son Henry should enjoy the inheritance. There was other
property, both in land and in money, for his elder son, and other
again for the maintenance of his wife, for the archdeacon's father
had been for many years Bishop of Barchester, and such a bishopric
as that of Barchester had been in those days worth money. Of his
intention in this respect he had never spoken in plain language
to either of his sons; but the major had for the last year or two
enjoyed the shooting of the Barsetshire covers, giving what orders
he pleased about the game; and the father had encouraged him to
take something like the management of the property into his hands.
There might be some fifteen hundred acres of it altogether, and the
archdeacon had rejoiced over it with his wife scores of times, saying
that there was many a sq