ace, thereby ensuring the withdrawal
of his rival's horse. In placid Saxon-blooded England people did not
demonstrate their feelings lightly and without some strong compelling
cause. What manner of evildoer was Robert Bludward?

The train stopped at another small station, and the two men got out. One
of them left behind him a copy of the _Argus_, the local paper to which
he had made reference. Alethia pounced on it, in the expectation of
finding a cultured literary endorsement of the censure which these rough
farming men had expressed in their homely, honest way. She had not far
to look; "Mr. Robert Bludward, Swanker," was the title of one of the
principal articles in the paper. She did not exactly know what a swanker
was, probably it referred to some unspeakable form of cruelty, but she
read enough in the first few sentences of the article to discover that
her cousin Robert, the man at whose house she was about to stay, was an
unscrupulous, unprincipled character, of a low order of intelligence, yet
cunning withal, and that he and his associates were responsible for most
of the misery, disease, poverty, and ignorance with which the country was
afflicted; never, except in one or two of the denunciatory Psalms, which
she had always supposed to have be written in a spirit of exaggerated
Oriental imagery, had she read such an indictment of a human being. And
this monster was going to meet her at Derrelton Station in a few short
minutes. She would know him at once; he would have the dark beetling
brows, the quick, furtive glance, the sneering, unsavoury smile that
always characterised the Sir Jaspers of this world. It was too late to
escape; she must force herself to meet him with outward calm.

It was a considerable shock to her to find that Robert was fair, with a
snub nose, merry eye, and rather a schoolboy manner. "A serpent in
duckling's plumage," was her private comment; merciful chance had
revealed him to her in his true colours.

As they drove away from the station a dissipated-looking man of the
labouring class waved his hat in friendly salute. "Good luck to you, Mr.
Bludward," he shouted; "you'll come out on top! We'll break old
Chobham's neck for him."

"Who was that man?" asked Alethia quickly.

"Oh, one of my supporters," laughed Robert; "a bit of a poacher and a bit
of a pub-loafer, but he's on the right side."

So these were the sort of associates that Robert Bludward consorted with,
thought