inty, anxiety of
this sort for his heir and only child, must prey upon any man's mind.
Still (his friends argued) the cure lay in his lifelong habits; these were
the firm ground on which he would feel his footing again and recover
himself--since, if so colourless a man could be said to nurse a passion,
it was for his game. A strict Tory by breeding, and less by any process
of intellectual conviction than from sheer inability to see himself in any
other light, indolent and contemptuous of politics, in game-preserving
alone he let his Toryism run into activity, even to a fine excess.
The Cleeve coverts, for instance, harboured none but pheasants of the old
pure breed, since extinct in England--the true Colchian--and the Squire
was capable of maintaining that these not only gave honester sport
(whatever he meant by this), but were better eating than any birds of
later importation (which was absurd). The appearance--old Macklin
declared--of a single green-plumed or white-ringed bird within a mile of
Cleeve Court was enough to give him a fit: certainly it would irritate him
more than any poacher could--though poachers, too, were poison.

When first the Squire took to neglecting his guns all set it down to a
passing dejection of spirit. He alone knew that he nursed a wound
incurable unless his son returned, and that this distaste was but an early
stage in his ailing. Being a man of reserved and sensitive soul, into
which no fellow-creature had been allowed to look, he told his secret to
no one, not even to his wife. She--a Roman Catholic and devout--had lived
for many years almost entirely apart from him, occupying her own rooms,
divided between her books and the spiritual consolations of Father
Halloran, who had a lodging at the Court and a board of his own.
In spite of the priest's demure eye and neat Irish wit, the three made a
melancholy household.

"As melancholy as a nest of gib cats," said old Macklin. "And I feel it
coming over me at nights up at my cottage. How's a man to sleep, knowing
the whole place so scandalously overstocked--the birds that tame they run
between your legs--and no leave to use a gun, even to club 'em into good
manners?"

"Leave it to Charley Hannaford," growled Jim bitterly. "He'll soon weed
us out neat and clean. I wonder the Squire don't pay him for doing our
work."

The head-keeper looked up sharply. "Know anything?" he asked laconically.

Jim answered one question with another.