N OF
HIM. HOW HER SECOND DAUGHTER CAME OUT IN THE GARDEN. HOW SHE SAW A
TRESPASSER, WITH SUCH A NICE DOG! HE MUSTN'T BE SHOT, _COUTE QUE
COUTE_! A LITTLE STONE BRIDGE. A SLIT IN A DOG'S COLLAR. OLD
MICHAEL'S OBSTINACY. HOW GWENDOLEN RAN AWAY TO DRESS, AND WAS
UNSOCIABLE AT DINNER. THE VOICE OF A DOG IN TROUBLE. ACHILLES, AND
HIS RECOGNITION. HOW THEY FOLLOWED ACHILLES, AT HIS OWN REQUEST,
AND WHAT HE SHOWED THE WAY TO. BUT THE MAN WAS NOT DEAD

If a stranger from America or Australia could have been shown at a
glance all that went to make up the Earldom of Ancester, he would have
been deeply impressed. All the leagues of parkland, woodland, moorland,
farmland that were its inheritance would have impressed him, not because
of their area--because Americans and Australians are accustomed to mere
crude area in their own departments of the planet--but because of the
amazing amount of old-world History transacted within its limits; the
way the antecedent Earls meddled in it; their magnificent record of
treachery and bloodshed and murder; wholesale in battle, retail in less
showy, but perhaps even more interesting, private assassination;
fascinating cruelties and horrors unspeakable! They might have been
impressed also, though, of course, in a less degree, by the Earldom's
very creditable show of forbears who, at the risk of being
uninteresting, behaved with common decency, and did their duty in the
station to which God or Debrett had called them; not drawing the sword
to decide a dispute until they had tried one or two of the less popular
expedients, and slighting their obligations to the Melodrama of the
future. Which rightly looks for its supplies of copy to persons of high
birth and low principles.

The present Earl took after his less mediaeval ancestry; and though he
received the sanction of his wife, and of persons who knew about things,
it was always conceded to him with a certain tone of allowance made for
a simple and pastoral nature. In the vulgarest tongue it might have been
said that he would never cut a dash. In his wife's it was said that
really the Earl was one of the most admirable of men, only never
intended by Providence for the Lord-Lieutenancy of a County. He was
scarcely to blame, therefore, for his shortcomings in that position. It
could not rank as one to which God had called him, without imputing
instability, or an oversight, to his summoner. As a summons from
Deb