invalid, and an irritable one, with a liver hopelessly
deranged, a yellow complexion, and a hatred of the English climate. The
fact that, instead of leaving the army and coming home at his father's
death, George Thorndyke had chosen to remain abroad and leave the estate
to the management of agents, had specially prejudiced him in the eyes of
the people of that part, and had heightened the warmth with which they
had received his brother. John Thorndyke had upon the occasion, of his
first visit to the family solicitors spoken his mind with much freedom
as to the manner in which Newman had been allowed a free hand.

"Another ten years," he said, "and there would not have been a cottage
habitable on the estate, nor a farm worth cultivating. He did absolutely
nothing beyond collecting the rents. He let the whole place go to rack
and ruin. The first day I arrived I sent him out of the house, with a
talking to that he won't forget as long as he lives."

"We never heard any complaints about him, Mr. Thorndyke, except that I
think we did once hear from the Rector of the place that his conduct was
not satisfactory. I remember that we wrote to him about it, and he
said that the Rector was a malignant fellow, on bad terms with all his
parishioners."

"If I had the scoundrel here," John Thorndyke said with indignation, "I
would let him have a taste of the lash of my dog whip. You should not
have taken the fellow's word; you should have sent down someone to find
out the true state of things. Why, the place has been an eyesore to the
whole neighborhood, the resort of poaching, thieving rascals; by gad,
if my brother George had gone down there I don't know what would
have happened! It will cost a couple of years' rent to get things put
straight."

When the Squire was at home there was scarce an evening when the Rector
did not come up to smoke a pipe and take his glass of old Jamaica or
Hollands with him.

"Look here, Bastow," the latter said, some three years after his return,
"what are you going to do with that boy of yours? I hear bad reports of
him from everyone; he gets into broils at the alehouse, and I hear
that he consorts with a bad lot of fellows down at Reigate. One of my
tenants--I won't mention names--complained to me that he had persecuted
his daughter with his attentions. They say, he was recognized among that
poaching gang that had an affray with Sir James Hartrop's keepers. The
thing is becoming a gross scandal."