ns, others looked and spoke,--so that everybody knew that
Mr. Arthur was to be contradicted in nothing. Had he, just at this
period, ordered a tree in the park to be cut down, it would, I think,
have been cut down, without reference to the master! But, perhaps,
John's power was most felt in the way in which he repressed the
expressions of his mother's high indignation. "Mean slut!" she once
said, speaking of Emily in her eldest son's hearing. For the girl,
to her thinking, had been mean and had been a slut. She had not
known,--so Mrs. Fletcher thought,--what birth and blood required of
her.

"Mother," John Fletcher had said, "you would break Arthur's heart if
he heard you speak in that way, and I am sure you would drive him
from Longbarns. Keep it to yourself." The old woman had shaken her
head angrily, but she had endeavoured to do as she had been bid.

"Isn't your brother riding that horse a little rashly?" Reginald
Cotgrave said to John Fletcher in the hunting field one day.

"I didn't observe," said John; "but whatever horse he's on, he always
rides rashly." Arthur was mounted on a long, raking thorough-bred
black animal, which he had bought himself about a month ago, and
which, having been run at steeplechases, rushed at every fence as
though he were going to swallow it. His brother had begged him to put
some rough-rider up till the horse could be got to go quietly, but
Arthur had persevered. And during the whole of this day the squire
had been in a tremor, lest there should be some accident.

"He used to have a little more judgment, I think," said Cotgrave. "He
went at that double just now as hard as the brute could tear. If the
horse hadn't done it all, where would he have been?"

"In the further ditch, I suppose. But you see the horse did do it
all."

This was all very well as an answer to Reginald Cotgrave,--to whom
it was not necessary that Fletcher should explain the circumstances.
But the squire had known as well as Cotgrave that his brother had
been riding rashly, and he had understood the reason why. "I don't
think a man ought to break his neck," he said, "because he can't
get everything that he wishes." The two brothers were standing then
together before the fire in the squire's own room, having just come
in from hunting.

"Who is going to break his neck?"

"They tell me that you tried to to-day."

"Because I was riding a pulling horse. I'll back him to be the
biggest leaper and the quickest h