the tongues of this interesting community from
year's end to year's end. Such a variation was afforded by the arrival
of two new and important members in its midst. Upon these Doppersdorp
was not slow to make up its mind, and whether foregathered in council
and the bar of the Barkly Hotel, or secure in the privacy of home
circle, hesitated not to express the same in no halting terms.

Now, the collective mind on the subject of Roden Musgrave was adverse.
His demerits were of a negative order, which is to say that his sins had
been those of omission rather than of commission, and, as was sure to be
the case, had rendered him unpopular. Who was he, Doppersdorp would
like to know, that he shut himself up like an oyster, as if nobody was
worth speaking to? though the possibility that the motive attributed to
the bivalve delicacy might be wide of the mark did not occur to the
originator of this felicitous simile. His predecessor, young Watkins,
had been hail-fellow-well-met with everybody; was, in fact, as nice a
young fellow as they could wish--and here Doppersdorp unwittingly
answered its own indignant query.

Roden Musgrave had no idea of being "young Anybody" to Dick, Tom, and
Harry, or hail-fellow-well-met--i.e., on terms to be patronised by the
various ornaments of Doppersdorp society, shading off in imperceptible
gradations to the local tailor, whom he would be obliged to indict
nearly every Monday morning for having overstepped the limits of public
order during the Saturday night's "spree," and been run in by the police
therefor. He had a wholesome belief in the old proverb regarding too
much familiarity, seeing in it a happy application to a man holding the
post he did in such a place as Doppersdorp. Wherein his reasoning was
sound; but the collective sense of the community opined differently, and
was wont to pronounce with graphic, if somewhat profane indignation,
that the new magistrate's clerk mistook himself for his omnipotent
Creator, and, in fact, wanted taking down a peg.

Not all, however, were of this opinion: his official chief, for
instance, as we have seen, and perhaps two or three others, among them
the retiring District Surgeon, Lambert's predecessor, a somewhat
cynical, at bottom, though on the surface rollicking, kind of
individual. He to Roden, while making his adieux: "We are sure to
tumble up against each other again somewhere, Musgrave, but one
consolation is that it couldn't be among a