s, but it is my desire to conform with the
customs of this country, especially in matters of etiquette.
Consequently, after pulling the second gentleman's nose, I handed him
the first gentleman's ticket, having none of my own and being
ignorant (in the darkness) that it bore the first gentleman's name.
It was a mischance, sir, but so far as I can see one that might have
happened to anybody. You say that even after apologising--for on
reflection I am always willing to apologise for any conduct into
which my infirmity of temper may have betrayed me--it is impossible
for me to continue here as your assistant. I am glad, then, that
prudence counselled me to provide two strings to my bow, and engage
myself to Dr. Mathers of Bath, on the chance that you proved
unsatisfactory; and I thank you for the month's salary, which I could
not perhaps claim under the circumstances as a right, but which I am
happy to accept as a favour."

CLEEVE COURT.

I.

Cleeve Court, known now as Cleeve Old Court, sits deep in a valley beside
a brook and a level meadow, across which it looks southward upon climbing
woods and glades descending here and there between them like broad green
rivers. Above, the valley narrows almost to a gorge, with scarps of
limestone, grey and red-streaked, jutting sheer over its alder beds and
fern-screened waterfalls; and so zigzags up to the mill and hamlet of
Ipplewell, beyond which spread the moors. Below, it bends southward and
widens gradually for a mile to the market-town of Cleeve Abbots, where by
a Norman bridge of ten arches its brook joins a large river, and their
waters, scarcely mingled, are met by the sea tides, spent and warm with
crawling over the sandbanks of a six-mile estuary.

Cleeve Old Court sees neither the limestone crags above nor the town
below, but sits sequestered in its own bend of the valley, in its own
clearing amid the heavy elms; so sheltered that, even in March and
November, when the wind sings aloft on the ridges, the smoke mounts
straight from its chimneys and the trees drip as steadily as though they
were clocks and marked the seconds perfunctorily, with no real interest in
the lapse of time. For the house, with its round-shouldered Jacobean
gables, its stone-cropped roof, lichen-spotted plaster, and ill-kept yew
hedge, has an air of resignation to decay, well-bred but spiritless, and
communicates it to the whole of its small landscape. Our old builders
chose the