, with four horses and
the big trap. The manager of Mulfera said his horses had something else
to do, and his neighbors backed him up with some discreet encouragement
on their own account. It was felt that a slur would be left upon the
whole district if his lordship actually met with the only sort of
reception which was predicted for him on Mulfera. Bishop Methuen,
however, was one of the last men on earth to shirk a plague-spot; and on
this one, warning was eventually received that the Bishop and his
chaplain would arrive on horseback the following Sunday morning, to
conduct divine service, if quite convenient, at eleven o'clock.

The language of the manager was something inconceivable upon the receipt
of this cool advice. He was a man named Carmichael, and quite a
different type from the neighbors who held up horny hands when the
Bishop decided on his raid. Carmichael was not "a native of this
colony," or of the next, but he was that distressing spectacle, the
public-school man who is no credit to his public school. Worse than
this, he was a man of brains; worst of all, he had promised very
differently as a boy. A younger man who had been at school with him,
having come out for his health, travelled some hundreds of miles to see
Carmichael, whose conversation struck him absolutely dumb. "He was
captain of our house," the visitor explained to Carmichael's
subordinates, "and you daren't say dash in dormitory--not even dash!"

In appearance this redoubtable person was chiefly remarkable for the
intellectual cast of his still occasionally clean-shaven countenance,
and for his double eye-glasses, or rather the way he wore them. They
were very strong and very common, without any rims, and Carmichael
bought them by the box. He would not wear them with a cord, and in the
heat they were continually slipping off his nose; when they did not slip
right off they hung at such an angle that Carmichael had to throw his
whole body and head backward in order to see anything through them
except the ground. And when they fell, someone else had to find them
while Carmichael cursed, for his naked eye was as blind as a bat's.

"Let's go mustering on Sunday," suggested the overseer--"every blessed
man! Let him find the whole place deserted, homestead and hut!"

"Or let's get blind for the occasion," was the bookkeeper's idea--"every
mother's son!"

"That would do," agreed the overseer, "if we got just blind enough. And
we might get the