if
I have work to do. Still, for others' sake, I have carried this month
past whenever I go to and from the Coltham bank, besides my
cash-box--this."

He showed me, peering out of his breast-pocket, a small pistol.

I was greatly startled.

"Does your wife know?"

"Of course. But she knows too that nothing but the last extremity
would force me to use it: also that my carrying it, and its being
noised about that I do so, may prevent my ever having occasion to use
it. God grant I never may! Don't let us talk about this."

He stopped, gazing with a sad abstraction down the sunshiny
valley--most part of which was already his own property. For whatever
capital he could spare from his business he never sunk in speculation,
but took a patriarchal pleasure in investing it in land, chiefly for
the benefit of his mills and those concerned therein.

"My poor people--they might have known me better! But I suppose one
never attains one's desire without its being leavened with some
bitterness. If there was one point I was anxious over in my youth, it
was to keep up through life a name like the Chevalier Bayard--how folk
would smile to hear of a tradesman emulating Bayard--'sans peur et sans
reproche!' And so things might be--ought to be. So perhaps they shall
be yet, in spite of this calumny."

"How shall you meet it? What shall you do?"

"Nothing. Live it down."

He stood still, looking across the valley to where the frosty line of
the hill-tops met the steel-blue, steadfast sky. Yes, I felt sure he
WOULD 'live it down.'

We dismissed the subject, and spent an hour more in pleasant chat,
about many things. Passing homeward through the beech-wood, where
through the bare tree-tops a light snow was beginning to fall, John
said, musingly:

"It will be a hard winter--we shall have to help our poor people a
great deal. Christmas dinners will be much in request."

"There's a saying, that the way to an Englishman's heart is through his
stomach. So, perhaps, you'll get justice by spring."

"Don't be angry, Phineas. As I tell my wife, it is not worth while.
Half the wrongs people do to us are through sheer ignorance. We must
be patient. 'IN YOUR PATIENCE POSSESS YE YOUR SOULS.'"

He said this, more to himself than aloud, as if carrying out the thread
of his own thought. Mine following it, and observing him,
involuntarily turned to another passage in our Book of books, about the
blessedness of some men, e