always was.

Spinney Lawn was bought before Joel Lea came to England. If he had
seen where it was I doubt whether he would have consented to the
purchase; but Perrault managed it all, and then, with what he had made
out of the case, bought himself a share in Meakin's office at
Shinglebay, and constituted himself Lady Hester's legal adviser.

Mr. Lea, after vainly trying to get his wife to return to Sault St.
Pierre, thought it wrong to be apart from her and his son, and came to
England.

Fulk went at once to call on him, expecting to be disgusted with
Yankeeisms; but came home, saying he had found a more unlucky man than
himself!

Fancy a great, big, plain, hard-working back-woodsman, bred only to the
axe and rifle, with illimitable forests to range in, happy in toil and
homely plenty, and a little king to himself, set down in an English
villa, with a trim garden and paddock, and servants everywhere to
deprive him of the very semblance to occupation!

Poor man! he had not even the alleviation of being proud of it, and
trying to live up to it. Puritan to the bone of his broad back, he
thought everything as wicked as it was wearisome and foolish; and lived
like Faithful in "Vanity Fair," solely enduring it for the sake of his
wife and son. I suppose he could not have carried her off, or altered
her course without the strong hand; for she was a determined woman, all
the more resolute because she acted for her child.

He was a staunch Dissenter, and would not go to church with Lady
Hester, who did so as a needful part of the belonging of her station,
or, perhaps, to watch over us, but trudged two miles every Sunday to
the meeting-house at Shinglebay, where he was a great light, and spent
all that she allowed him on the minister and the Sunday school.

As to society, he abhorred it on principle, and kept out of the way
when his wife gave her parties. If she had an old affection for him in
the depths of her heart, it was swallowed up in vexation and
provocation; and no wonder, for the verdict of society, as Miss Prior
reported it, was--"How sad that such a woman as Lady Hester should have
been thrown away on a mere common man--not a bit better than a
labourer."

I detested him like all the rest; but Fulk declared he was sublime in
passive endurance, and used to make opportunities of consulting him
about cattle or farming, just to interest him.

Fulk and the dissenting minister were the only friends the poor man