you can send me in, Major?
I'll walk back. I wouldn't like to keep your horse in town all day. I
shall probably be a long time. I can't scamp the business, you know.
I must thoroughly investigate Simpkins. After that, I'll look in and
have a chat with Doyle."

CHAPTER V.

Mr. Eustace St. Clair Simpkins preferred to have his letters addressed
"E. St. Clair-Simpkins, Esq.," as if his second Christian name were
part of his surname. He belonged by birth to the _haute aristocratie_,
and believed that the use of a hyphen made this fact plain to the
members of the middle classes with whom he came in contact. He was a
man of thirty-five years of age, but looked slightly older, because his
hair was receding rapidly from the left side of his forehead. He had
enjoyed, for a time, the education afforded by one of the greatest of
the English public schools; but at the age of sixteen, being then
classed with boys so small that he looked ridiculous among them, he was
removed at the special request of the headmaster. A private tutor,
heavily paid, took him in hand, but was no more successful with him
than the schoolmasters had been. At the age of eighteen he was found
unfit to pass any of the examinations which open the way to gentlemanly
employment. Various jobs were found for him by his desponding parents,
but on every occasion he was returned to them politely. He drifted at
last into an Irish land-agent's office. Mr. Tempest was a successful
man of business, and managed estates in various parts of the country
from his Dublin office. He was under an obligation to a London
solicitor, whose wife was the sister of Mrs. Simpkins, the mother of
Eustace St. Clair. He felt that he could not very well refuse to give
the young man such a chance as a clerkship afforded. Things went on
fairly satisfactorily until Mr. Simpkins conceived the idea of marrying
his employer's daughter. He reasoned, quite rightly, that Miss
Tempest, being an only child, was likely to have a substantial fortune.
Mr. Tempest, unimpressed by the hyphened St. Clair, was unwilling to
allow the courtship to proceed. He sent Mr. Simpkins down to Ballymoy,
and charged him with the management of such parts of the Buckley estate
as were not already sold to tenants.

Mr. Simpkins, for the first time in his life, felt that he had found a
position which really suited him. There was very little work to do.
He received the ground rents of the town of Ball