hid itself as much as possible in dark corners, but was in truth the one
thing sharply present to him--these were the sort of impressions that
remained with Elsmere afterward of this last meeting with his people.

He had made a speech, of which he never could remember a word. As he
sat down, there had been a slight flutter of surprise in the sympathetic
looks of those about him, as though the tone of it had been somewhat
unexpected and disproportionate to the occasion. Had he betrayed himself
in any way? He looked for Catherine, but she was nowhere to be seen.
Only in his search he caught the Squire's ironical glance, and wondered
with quick shame what sort of nonsense he had been talking.

Then a neighboring clergyman, who had been his warm supporter and
admirer from the beginning, sprang up and made a rambling panegyric on
him and on his work, which Elsmere writhed under. His work! Absurdity!
What could be done in two years? He saw it all as the merest nothing, a
ragged beginning which might do more harm than good.

But the cheering was incessant, the popular feeling intense. There was
old Milsom waving a feeble arm; John Allwood gaunt, but radiant; Mary
Sharland, white still as the ribbons on her bonnet, egging on her
flushed and cheering husband; and the club boys grinning and shouting,
partly for love of Elsmere, mostly because to the young human animal
mere noise is heaven. In front was an old hedger and ditcher, who
came round the parish periodically, and never failed to take Elsmere's
opinion as to 'a bit of prapperty' he and two other brothers as ancient
as himself had been quarrelling over for twenty years, and were likely
to go on quarrelling over, till all three litigants had closed their
eyes on a mortal scene which had afforded them on the whole vast
entertainment, though little pelf. Next him was a bowed and twisted old
tramp who had been shepherd in the district in his youth, had then gone
through the Crimea and the Mutiny, and was now living about the commons,
welcome to feed here and sleep there for the sake of his stories and his
queer innocuous wit. Robert had had many a gay argumentative walk with
him, and he and his companion had tramped miles to see the function, to
rattle their sticks on the floor in Elsmere's honor, and satiate their
curious gaze on the Squire.

When all was over, Elsmere, with his wife on his arm, mounted the hill
to the rectory, leaving the green behind them still crowded w