terposed.

'Have doon wi' ye,' she said sullenly, putting out a long bony arm in
front of her husband, 'or I'll just lock oop that brandy where ye'll naw
find it if ye pull the house doon. Now, sir,' turning to Elsmere, 'would
ye jest be going? Ye mean it weel, I daur say, but ye've doon yer wark,
and ye maun leave it.'

And she motioned him out, not without a sombre dignity. Elsmere
went home crestfallen. The enthusiast is a good deal too apt to
under-estimate the stubbornness of moral fact, and these rebuffs have
their stern uses for character.

'They intend to go on living here, I am told,' Elsmere said, as he wound
up the story, 'and as Henslowe is still churchwarden, he may do us
a world of mischief yet. However, I think that wife will keep him in
order. No doubt vengeance would be sweet to her as to him, but she has
a shrewd eye, poor soul, to the Squire's remittances. It is a wretched
business, and I don't take a man's hate easily, Catherine!--though it
may be a folly to say so.'

Catherine was irresponsive. The Old Testament element in her found
a lawful satisfaction in Henslowe's fall, and a wicked man's hatred,
according to her, mattered only to himself. The Squire's conduct, on the
other hand, made her uneasily proud. To her, naturally, it simply meant
that he was falling under Robert's spell. So much the better for him,
but--

CHAPTER XXIV.

That same afternoon Robert started on a walk to a distant farm, where
one of his Sunday-school boys lay recovering from rheumatic fever. The
rector had his pocket full of articles--a story book in one, a puzzle
map in the other--destined for Master Carter's amusement. On the way he
was to pick up Mr. Wendover at the park gates. It was a delicious April
morning. A soft west wind blew through leaf and grass--

Driving sweet buds, like flocks, to feed in air.

The spring was stirring everywhere, and Robert raced along, feeling in
every vein a life, an ebullience akin to that of nature. As he neared
the place of meeting it occurred to him that the Squire had been
unusually busy lately, unusually silent and absent too on their walks.
What _was_ he always at work on? Robert had often inquired of him as to
the nature of those piles of proof and manuscript with which his table
was littered. The Squire had never given any but the most general
answer, and had always changed the subject. There was an invincible
_personal_ reserve about him which, through all hi