asked Dr Drummond.

"Just what he did. I wanted to send Rawlins out and make a story of
it--we'd have given it a column, with full heads; but the old man didn't
like it. It's hard to know what some people will like. But it was my own
foolishness for asking. A thing like that is public property."

"There's a good deal of feeling," said Lorne. "So much that I understand
the bank is moving for change of venue."

"I hope they won't get it," said Dr Drummond sharply. "A strong local
feeling is valuable evidence in a case like this. I don't half approve
this notion that a community can't manage its own justice when it
happens to take an interest in the case. I've no more acquaintance with
the Squire than 'How d'ye do?' and I don't know his son from Adam; but
I'd serve on the jury tomorrow if the Crown asked it, and there's many
more like me."

Mr Williams, who had made a brief note on his shirt cuff, restored his
pencil to his waistcoat pocket. "I shall oppose a change of venue," said
he.

CHAPTER V

It was confidently expected by the Murchison family that when Stella was
old enough she would be a good deal in society. Stella, without doubt,
was well equipped for society; she had exactly those qualities which
appealed to it in Elgin, among which I will mention two--the quality
of being able to suggest that she was quite as good as anybody without
saying so, and the even more important quality of not being any better.
Other things being equal--those common worldly standards that prevailed
in Elgin as well as anywhere else in their degree--other things being
equal, this second simple quality was perhaps the most important of all.
Mr and Mrs Murchison made no claim and small attempt upon society. One
doubts whether, with children coming fast and hard times long at the
door, they gave the subject much consideration; but if they did, it is
highly unlikely to have occurred to them that they were too good
for their environment. Yet in a manner they were. It was a matter of
quality, of spiritual and mental fabric; they were hardly aware that
they had it, but it marked them with a difference, and a difference is
the one thing a small community, accustomed comfortably to scan its own
intelligible averages, will not tolerate. The unusual may take on
an exaggeration of these; an excess of money, an excess of piety, is
understood; but idiosyncrasy susceptible to no common translation is
regarded with the hostility earned by t