you
ever know of any such gross outrage on common decency? Why, God bless
my soul and body, I never heard of such a thing!"

Lionel knew quite well what he meant. The fact was that a Free Church
minister whom Sir Hugh Cunyngham had met somewhere had called at Aivron
Lodge; as the custom of that part of the country is, he was invited to
stay to dinner; he sat late, told many stories, and drank a good deal of
whiskey, until it was not judged prudent to let him try to get his pony
across the ford, even if hospitality had not demanded that he should be
offered a room for the night; and then, when every one was thinking of
getting away to bed, the worthy man must needs insist on having family
worship, to which the servants had also to be summoned. It was the
inordinate length of this service at such a time of night that had
driven old Lord Fareborough to the verge of madness.

"Look at me!" he said to Lionel, in tones of deep and bitter
indignation. "Look at me--a skeleton--a wreck of a human being, who can
only get along by the most careful nursing of his nervous system. My
heart is affected; I have serious doubts about the state of my lungs? it
is only through the most assiduous nursing of my nerves that
I exist at all. And what is more maddening than enforced
restraint--imprisonment--no chance of leaving the room, with all those
strange servants at the door; why, God bless my soul, I call it an
outrage! I yield to no one in respect for the cloth, whether it is worn
by a Presbyterian, or a Catholic, or one of my own church; but I say
that no one has a right to thrust religious services down my throat!
What the devil did Cunyngham mean by asking him to stay to dinner at
all?"

"As I understand it," said Lionel, with a becoming diffidence, "it was
some suggestion of Captain Waveney's. He said the Free Church ministers
were particular friends of the crofters--and of course the good-will of
the crofters is of importance to a shooting-tenant--"

"The good-will of the crofters!" the bewigged old nobleman broke in,
impatiently. "Are you aware, sir, that the Strathaivron Branch of the
Land League met last week and passed a resolution declaring salmon to be
ground-game? What are you to do with people like that? How are you to
reason with them? What is the use of pacifying them? They are in the
hands of violent and malevolent revolutionaries--it is war they
want--it is 1789 they want--it is plunder and robbery and confiscation