he duties were heavy, the privileges were great. So
the Marquis himself felt; and he knew that a mantle of security, of
a certain thickness, was spread upon the shoulders of each of his
people by reason of the tenure which bound them together. But he did
not conceive that this mantle would be proof against the bullet of
the ordinary assassin, or the hammer of the outside ruffian. But here
the case was very different. The hammer had been the hammer of no
outside ruffian. To the best of his lordship's belief,--and in that
belief he was supported by the constabulary of the whole county,--the
hammer had been wielded by a man of Bullhampton,--had been wielded
against his tenant by the son of "a person who holds land under a
gentleman who has some property in the parish." It was thus the
Marquis was accustomed to speak of his neighbour, Mr. Gilmore, who,
in the Marquis's eyes, was a man not big enough to have his tenants
called his people. That such a man as Sam Brattle should have
murdered such a one as Mr. Trumbull, was to the Marquis an insult
rather than an injury; and now it was to be enhanced by the release
of the man from prison, and that by order of a bench of magistrates
on which Mr. Gilmore sat!

And there was more in it even than all this. It was very well known
at Turnover Park,--the seat of Lord Trowbridge, near Westbury,--that
Mr. Gilmore, the gentleman who held property in his lordship's parish
of Bullhampton, and Mr. Fenwick, who was vicar of the same, were
another Damon and Pythias. Now the ladies at Turnover, who were much
devoted to the Low Church, had heard and doubtless believed, that our
friend, Mr. Fenwick, was little better than an infidel. When first
he had come into the county, they had been very anxious to make him
out to be a High Churchman, and a story or two about a cross and
a candlestick were fabricated for their gratification. There was
at that time the remnant of a great fight going on between the
Trowbridge people and another great family in the neighbourhood on
this subject; and it would have suited the Ladies Stowte,--John
Augustus Stowte was the Marquis of Trowbridge,--to have enlisted our
parson among their enemies of this class; but the accusation fell so
plump to the ground, was so impossible of support, that they were
obliged to content themselves with knowing that Mr. Fenwick was--an
infidel! To do the Marquis justice, we must declare that he would
not have troubled himself on this