as all in a piece
with his Grace's conduct that he should purchase donkeys for them to
ride upon; but the animals, when let loose, would gnaw at the trees, so
the services of the four-legged asses were dispensed with.

His manner of dealing with a strike was a summary one. The wages of the
excavators of the tunnels were fifteen shillings a week regularly,
sunshine or rain; but the men thought their rich employer could afford
them an increase, so they struck.

"You can strike as long as you like," was the message sent by the Duke,
"it does not matter to me if the work is never done."

This cool attitude had its effect, the strike was at an end, and the
tunnelling proceeded.

One reason given for planning the tunnels was that when he first desired
to withdraw himself from observation he tried to close the public rights
of way over the estate. This brought him into collision with the powers
that be, and he compromised matters to his own satisfaction by making
the underground roadways. His cynicism was rich.

"Here have I had provided for you at enormous expense a clean pathway
underground, lighted with gas too, and you will persist in walking above
ground," was his salute to some astounded visitors. The idea that they
should prefer the sunshine, the delightful woodland scenery and
sweet-smelling scents wafted over Welbeck in summer-time, to the gaseous
tunnels, as if they were rabbits having natural affinities to the
burrows of the earth, was one only worthy of a ducal misanthropist.

He was "The Invisible Prince," he liked to take men unawares, he enjoyed
a grim joke at their expense, though whether he ever showed signs of
merriment, at least in after life, is not so much in the memories of
those who knew him, as his eccentricities. He is more associated with
the character of an ogre and a cynic who shunned his fellow-men, yet
there are some of his employees still living who give him a good word as
a kind and considerate master.

There have been various reasons put forth to account for his withdrawal
from the society of his peers. It was said that he was smitten with
leprosy, that he had an incurable skin desease; then that his love
affairs had gone awry when he was a young man, with the result that he
became a woman-hater, then a hater of mankind generally.

The Duke was moody and uncertain in his temper. Sometimes he would pass
pedestrians in the park without noticing them; at other times strangers
would be ast