eny that for Dick's wife this sacrifice had its
consolatory aspects. It was a long time now since there had been quite
enough money for anything at Mount Music. Those far-sighted guardian
angels who had compelled the investment of Lady Isabel's dowry in
gilt-edged securities, had placed the care of these in the hands of
hide-bound English trustees (the definition is Major Dick's) and the
amiable reader need therefore have no anxieties that starvation
threatened this well-meaning family, but, as Lady Isabel frequently
said, "what with the Boys, and Judith's trousseau, and the Wedding,
and One-Thing-and-Another" (which last is always a big item in the
domestic budget) the more common needs of every day had to submit to
very drastic condensation, and it was indisputable that the
Talbot-Lowry family-coach was running on the down-grade.

The law of averages is a stringent one, and it may be assumed with
reasonable certainty, that when one ancient and respectable
family-coach runs down hill, another vehicle, probably of more modern
equipment, will go up. In the case under consideration, the operations
of this principle were less obscure than is sometimes the way with
them. As Mount Music descended, so did No. 6, The Mall, Cluhir, rise,
and Dr. Mangan's growing prosperity compensated Fate for the decline
in Major Talbot-Lowry's affairs, with a precision that, to a person
interested in the statistics of averages, might have seemed beautiful.
The Big Doctor was now the leading man in Cluhir, leader in its
councils and its politics. On his professional side, his advice and
ministrations were in demand even beyond the range of his motor car,
and the measure of his greatness may be best estimated when it is
mentioned that his motor had been the first to startle the streets of
his native town.

Major Talbot-Lowry was of the Old Guard, who, in those now far away
times, swore never to surrender to what he held to be so thoroughly
unsportsmanlike an innovation as a motor car, and the Doctor was
accustomed to offer facetious apologies when he and his car drew up at
the Mount Music hall door. This had become a fairly frequent
occurrence. Dick was not the man he had been. When his hounds went,
old age came, and it came like an illness, bewilderingly,
unexpectedly. Dick's long, straight legs began to give at the knees,
and his square shoulders learned the hollow curve of the back of his
armchair, and submitted to it. His long sight, that