sh will go by his opinion; and tell her to keep
the secret from her sister."

Frank did it, and well. Valencia was horror-struck, and wrote.

Scoutbush was away at sea, nobody knew where; and a full fortnight
elapsed before an answer came.

"My dear, you are quite mistaken if you think I can do anything.
Nine-tenths of the houses in Aberalva are not in my hands; but
copyholds and long leases, over which I have no power. If the people
will complain to me of any given nuisance, I'll right it if I can; and
if the doctor wants money, and sees any ways of laying it out well, he
shall have what he wants, though I am very high in Queer Street just
now, ma'am, having paid your bills before I left town, like a good
brother: but I tell you again, I have no more power than you have,
except over a few cottages, and Tardrew assured me, three weeks ago,
that they were as comfortable as they ever had been."

So Tardrew had forestalled Thurnall in writing to the Viscount. Well,
there was one more chance to be tried.

Tom gave his lecture in the school-room. He showed them magnified
abominations enough to frighten all the children into fits, and
dilated on horrors enough to spoil all appetites: he proved to them
that, though they had the finest water in the world all over the
town, they had contrived to poison almost every drop of it; he waxed
eloquent, witty, sarcastic; and the net result was a general grumble.

"How did he get hold of all the specimens, as he calls them? What
business has he poking his nose down people's wells and waterbutts?"

But an unexpected ally arose at this juncture, in the coast-guard
lieutenant, who, being valiant after his evening's brandy-and-water,
rose and declared, "that Dr. Thurnall was a very clever man; that
by what he'd seen himself in the West Indies, it was all as true as
gospel; that the parish might have the cholera if it liked,"--and here
a few expletives occurred,--"but that he'd see that the coast-guard
houses were put to rights at once; for he would not have the lives of
Her Majesty's servants endangered by such dirty tricks, not fit for
heathen savages," etc. etc.

Tom struck while the iron was hot. He saw that the great man's speech
had produced an impression.

"Would he" (so he asked the lieutenant privately) "get some one to
join him, and present a few of these nuisances?"

He would do anything in his contempt for "a lot of long-shore
merchant-skippers and herringers, who went