ht not, for the sake of the public, to be more carefully
protected from injury. Local archaeological societies should come and read
papers in it. Clergymen, wishing to combine a little instruction with the
pleasures of a school-feast, should arrive with van-loads of cheering boys
and girls, a troop of ardent teachers, many calico flags and a brass band.
Artists, keen-eyed and picturesque, each with his good-humored air of
possessing the place so much more truly than any mere country gentleman
ever could, should come to gaze and sketch. Meanwhile, Thorne should remark
about twice a week that of course he could pull the whole thing down if he
liked; to which every one should smile assent, recognizing an evident but
utterly unimportant fact. And then," said Hammond solemnly, "when all the
archaeologists were eating and drinking, enjoying their own theories and
picking holes in their neighbors' discoveries, the bolt should fall in the
shape of an announcement that Mr. Thorne had sold the stones as building
materials, and that the workmen had already removed the most ancient and
interesting part. After which he would go slowly to his grave, dying of his
triumph and a broken heart."

It was all quite true, though Godfrey Hammond might have added that all the
execrations of the antiquarians would hardly have added to the burden of
shame and remorse of which Mr. Thorne would have felt the weight before the
last cart carried away its load from the trampled sward; that he would have
regretted his decision every hour of his life; and if by a miracle he could
have found himself once more with the fatal deed undone, he would have
rejoiced for a moment, suffered his old torment for a little while, and
then proceeded to do it again.

For a great part of Mr. Thorne's life the boast of his power over
Brackenhill had been on his lips more frequently than the twice a week of
which Hammond talked. Of late years it had not been so. He had used his
power to assure himself that he possessed it, and gradually awoke to the
consciousness that he had lost it by thus using it.

He had had three sons--Maurice, a fine, high-spirited young fellow; Alfred,
good-looking and good-tempered, but indolent; James, a slim, sickly lad,
who inherited from his mother a fatal tendency to decline. She died while
he was a baby, and he was petted from that time forward. Godfrey Thorne was
well satisfied with Maurice, but was always at war with his second son, who