roachable morals. He could play the piano, the harp, the viola,
the flute, and the clarinet, and sing a very true mild tenor. As
secretary of the Durdlebury Musical Association, he filled an
important position in the town. Dr. Flint--Joshua Flint, Mus.
Doc.--organist of the cathedral, scattered broadcast golden opinions
of Doggie. There was once a concert of old English music, which the
dramatic critics of the great newspapers attended--and one of them
mentioned Doggie--"Mr. Marmaduke Trevor, who played the viol da gamba
as to the manner born." Doggie cut out the notice, framed it, and
stuck it up in his peacock and ivory sitting-room.

Besides music, Doggie had other social accomplishments. He could
dance. He could escort young ladies home of nights. Not a dragon in
Durdlebury would not have trusted Doggie with untold daughters. With
women, old and young, he had no shynesses. He had been bred among
them, understood their purely feminine interests, and instinctively
took their point of view. On his visits to London, he could be
entrusted with commissions. He could choose the exact shade of silk
for a drawing-room sofa cushion, and had an unerring taste in the
selection of wedding presents. Young men, other than budding
ecclesiastical dignitaries, were rare in Durdlebury, and Doggie had
little to fear from the competition of coarser masculine natures. In a
word, Doggie was popular.

Although of no mean or revengeful nature, he was human enough to feel
a little malicious satisfaction when it was proved to Durdlebury that
Oliver had gone to the devil. His Aunt Sarah, Mrs. Manningtree, had
died midway in the Phineas McPhail period; Mr. Manningtree a year or
so later had accepted a living in the North of England, and died when
Doggie was about four-and-twenty. Meanwhile Oliver, who had been
withdrawn young from Rugby, where he had been a thorn in the side of
the authorities, and had been pinned like a cockchafer to a desk in a
family counting-house in Lothbury, E.C., had broken loose, quarrelled
with his father, gone off with paternal malediction and a maternal
heritage of a thousand pounds to California, and was lost to the
family ken. When a man does not write to his family, what explanation
can there be save that he is ashamed to do so? Oliver was ashamed of
himself. He had taken to desperate courses. He was an outlaw. He had
gone to the devil. His name was rarely mentioned in Durdlebury--to
Marmaduke Trevor's very grea