zed Dairyman Jinks. 'They will be bound to have
a randy every fortnight to keep the moth out of the furniture!'

By this time Somerset was handing out the wife of his bosom, and
Dairyman Jinks went on: 'That's no more Miss Power that was, than my
niece's daughter Kezia is Miss Power--in short it is a different woman
altogether!'

'There is no mistake about the woman,' said the landlord; 'it is her fur
clothes that make her look so like a caterpillar on end. Well, she is
not a bad bargain! As for Captain De Stancy, he'll fret his gizzard
green.'

'He's the man she ought to ha' married,' declared the farmer in
broadcloth. 'As the world goes she ought to have been Lady De Stancy.
She gave up her chapel-going, and you might have thought she would
have given up her first young man: but she stuck to him, though by all
accounts he would soon have been interested in another party.'

''Tis woman's nature to be false except to a man, and man's nature to be
true except to a woman,' said the landlord of Sleeping-Green. 'However,
all's well that ends well, and I have something else to think of than
new-married couples;' saying which the speaker moved off, and the
others returned to their seats, the young pair who had been their theme
vanishing through the hotel into some private paradise to rest and dine.

By this time their arrival had become known, and a crowd soon gathered
outside, acquiring audacity with continuance there. Raising a hurrah,
the group would not leave till Somerset had showed himself on the
balcony above; and then declined to go away till Paula also had
appeared; when, remarking that her husband seemed a quiet young man
enough, and would make a very good borough member when their present one
misbehaved himself, the assemblage good-humouredly dispersed.

Among those whose ears had been reached by the hurrahs of these idlers
was a man in silence and solitude, far out of the town. He was leaning
over a gate that divided two meads in a watery level between Stancy
Castle and Markton. He turned his head for a few seconds, then continued
his contemplative gaze towards the towers of the castle, visible over
the trees as far as was possible in the leaden gloom of the November
eve. The military form of the solitary lounger was recognizable as that
of Sir William De Stancy, notwithstanding the failing light and his
attitude of so resting his elbows on the gate that his hands enclosed
the greater part of his face.