s in the town? Greenthorne just told me so."

"Then I had better get out of it, for Heytesbury isn't big enough
for the two of us. Come, you've done here, and we might as well jog
home."

Gilmore dined at the Vicarage that evening, and of course the day's
work was discussed. The quarrel, too, which had taken place at the
farmhouse had only yet been in part described to Mrs. Fenwick. "Do
you know I feel half triumphant and half frightened," Mrs. Fenwick
said to the Squire. "I know that the Marquis is an old fool,
imperious, conceited, and altogether unendurable when he attempts
to interfere. And yet I have a kind of feeling that because he is a
Marquis, and because he owns two thousand and so many acres in the
parish, and because he lives at Turnover Park, one ought to hold him
in awe."

"Frank didn't hold him in awe yesterday," said the Squire.

"He holds nothing in awe," said the wife.

"You wrong me there, Janet. I hold you in great awe, and every lady
in Wiltshire more or less;--and I think I may say every woman. And
I would hold him in a sort of awe, too, if he didn't drive me beyond
myself by his mixture of folly and pride."

"He can do us a great deal of mischief, you know," said Mrs. Fenwick.

"What he can do, he will do," said the parson. "He even gave me a bad
name, no doubt; but I fancy he was generous enough to me in that way
before yesterday. He will now declare that I am the Evil One himself,
and people won't believe that. A continued persistent enmity,
always at work, but kept within moderate bounds, is more dangerous
now-a-days, than a hot fever of revengeful wrath. The Marquis can't
send out his men-at-arms and have me knocked on the head, or cast
into a dungeon. He can only throw mud at me, and the more he throws
at once, the less will reach me."

As to Sam, they were agreed that, whether he were innocent or guilty,
the old miller should be induced to regard him as innocent, as far as
their joint exertion in that direction might avail.

"He is innocent before the law till he has been proved to be guilty,"
said the Squire.

"Then of course there can be nothing wrong in telling his father that
he is innocent," said the lady.

The Squire did not quite admit this, and the parson smiled as he
heard the argument; but they both acknowledged that it would be right
to let it be considered throughout the parish that Sam was to be
regarded as blameless for that night's transaction. Nevertheless, Mr.