t shock that Evans was capable of
sustaining was administered when he heard of the secession to the
enemy of Colonel Tom Coppinger. Only second to it was the discovery
that Colonel Tom's poisoned offspring was to be received at Mount
Music and admitted to the fellowship of its children.

"No!" Evans said to Mrs. Dixon, standing on the hearthrug in the
sanctuary of the housekeeper's room, one wet afternoon, shortly after
the Coppinger return: "I see changes here, better and worse, good and
bad, but I didn't think I'd live to see what I seen to-day--the
children of this house consorting with a Papist!"

"Fie!" said Mrs. Dixon, without conviction. She was fat and
easy-tempered, and though ever anxious to conciliate him whom she
respected and feared as "Mr. Eevans," her powers of dissimulation
often failed at a pinch of this kind.

Mr. Evans looked at his table-companion with a contempt to which she
had long been resigned. He was a short, thin, bald man, with a sharp
nose curved like a reaping-hook, iron-grey whiskers and hair, and
fierce pale blue eyes. Later on, Christian, in the pride of her first
introduction to Tennyson, had been inspired by his high shoulders and
black tailed coat to entitle him "The many-wintered crow," and the
name was welcomed by her fellows, and registered in the repository of
phrases and nicknames that exists in all well-regulated families.

"'Fie!'" he repeated after Mrs. Dixon, witheringly. "I declare before
God, Mrs. Dixon, if I was to tell you the Pope o' Rome was coming to
dinner next Sunday, it's all you'd say would be 'Fie!'"

Mrs. Dixon received this supposition of catastrophe with annoying
calm, and even reverted to Mr. Evans' earlier statement in a manner
that might have bewildered a less experienced disputant than he.

"Well, indeed, Mr. Eevans," she said, appeasingly, "I'd say he was a
nice child enough, and the very dead spit of the poor Colonel. I dunno
what harm he could do the children at all?"

The Prophet Samuel could scarcely have regarded Saul, when he offered
those ill-fated apologies relative to King Agag, with a more sinister
disfavour than did Evans view Mrs. Dixon.

"I'll say one thing to you, Mrs. Dixon," he said, moving to the door
with that laborious shuffle that had inspired one of the hunted and
suffering tribe of his pantry-boys to the ejaculation: "I thank God,
there's more in his boots than what's there room for!"--"and I'll say
it once, and that's enough