is words, are becoming once more a constant source
of moral effort and spiritual hope. See for yourself!'

However, we are anticipating. Let us go back to May.

One beautiful morning Robert was sitting working in his study, his
windows open to the breezy blue sky and the budding plane-trees outside,
when the door was thrown open and Mr. Wendover was announced.

The Squire entered; but what a shrunken and aged Squire! The gait was
feeble, the bearing had lost all its old erectness, the bronzed strength
of the face had given place to a waxen and ominous pallor. Robert,
springing up with joy to meet the great gust of Murewell air which
seemed to blow about him with the mention of the Squire's name, was
struck, arrested. He guided his guest to a chair with an almost filial
carefulness.

'I don't believe, Squire,' he exclaimed, 'you ought to be doing
this---wandering about London by yourself!'

But the Squire, as silent and angular as ever when anything personal to
himself was concerned, would take no notice of the implied anxiety and
sympathy. He grasped his umbrella between his knees with a pair of brown
twisted hands, and, sitting very upright, looked critically round the
room. Robert, studying the dwindled figure, remembered with a pang the
saying of another Oxford scholar, _a propos_ of the death of a young
man of extraordinary promise, '_What learning has perished with him! How
vain seem all toil to acquire!_'--and the words, as they passed through
his mind, seemed to him to ring another death-knell.

But after the first painful impression he could not help losing himself
in the pleasure of the familiar face, the Murewell associations.

'How is the village, and the lnstitute? And what sort of man is my
successor--the man, I mean, who came after Armitstead?'

'I had him once to dinner,' said the Squire briefly; 'he made a false
quantity, and asked me to subscribe to the Church Missionary Society.
I haven't seen him since. He and the village have been at loggerheads
about the Institute, I believe. He wanted to turn out the Dissenters.
Bateson came to me, and we circumvented him, of course. But the man's an
ass. Don't talk of him!'

Robert sighed a long sigh. Was all his work undone? It wrung his heart
to remember the opening of the Institute, the ardor of his boys.
He asked a few questions about individuals, but soon gave it up as
hopeless. The Squire neither knew nor cared.

'And Mrs. Darcy?'

'My sister ha