or a
manufacturer of brandy, or someone of that sort. Well, everything has
its end and God's will be done."

"No, no, Squire, don't you talk like that," answered George with
emotion. "I can't bear to hear you talk like that. And what's more it
ain't so."

"What do you mean by that?" asked the old gentleman sharply. "It /is/
so, there's no getting over it unless you can find thirty thousand
pounds or thereabouts, to take up these mortgages with. Nothing short
of a miracle can save it. That's always your way. 'Oh, something will
turn up, something will turn up.'"

"Thin there'll be a miricle," said George, bringing down a fist like a
leg of mutton with a thud upon the table, "it ain't no use of your
talking to me, Squire. I knaw it, I tell you I knaw it. There'll never
be no other than a de la Molle up at the Castle while we're alive, no,
nor while our childer is alive either. If the money's to be found, why
drat it, it will be found. Don't you think that God Almighty is going
to put none of them there counter jumpers into Honham Castle, where
gentlefolk hev lived all these ginerations, because He ain't. There,
and that's the truth, because I knaw it and so help me God--and if I'm
wrong it's a master one."

The Squire, who was striding up and down the room in his irritation,
stopped suddenly in his walk, and looked at his retainer with a sharp
and searching gaze upon his noble features. Notwithstanding his
prejudices, his simplicity, and his occasional absurdities, he was in
his own way an able man, and an excellent judge of human nature. Even
his prejudices were as a rule founded upon some solid ground, only it
was as a general rule impossible to get at it. Also he had a share of
that marvellous instinct which, when it exists, registers the mental
altitude of the minds of others with the accuracy of an aneroid. He
could tell when a man's words rang true and when they rang false, and
what is more when the conviction of the true, and the falsity of the
false, rested upon a substantial basis of fact or error. Of course the
instinct was a vague, and from its nature an undefinable one, but it
existed, and in the present instance arose in strength. He looked at
the ugly melancholy countenance of the faithful George with that keen
glance of his, and observed that for the moment it was almost
beautiful--beautiful in the light of conviction which shone upon it.
He looked, and it was borne in upon him that what George said w