if there had been
forty gates in a row he would not then have noted them more than he did
the one. As far as the villagers and farmers were concerned he never
came out of this manner save in wide-apart cases, when he had forced
upon him either some great exhibition of stupidity or some faint
indication of double-dealing, and then this smouldering man flared out
encrimsoning his immediate surrounding with a brief fire of ancestral
anger. But the lapse back to indifference was more surprising. It was
far quicker than the flare in the beginning. His feeling was suddenly
ashes at the moment when one was certain it would lick the sky.

Some of the villagers asserted that he was mad. They argued it long in
the manner of their kind, repeating, repeating, and repeating, and when
an opinion confusingly rational appeared they merely shook their heads
in pig-like obstinacy. Anyhow, it was historically clear that no such
squire had before been in the line of Lintons of Oldrestham Hall, and
the present incumbent was a shock.

The servants at the Hall--notably those who lived in the
country-side--came in for a lot of questioning, and none were found too
backward in explaining many things which they themselves did not
understand. The household was most irregular. They all confessed that it
was really so uncustomary that they did not know but what they would
have to give notice. The master was probably the most extraordinary man
in the whole world. The butler said that Linton would drink beer with
his meals day in and day out like any carrier resting at a pot-house. It
didn't matter even if the meal were dinner. Then suddenly he would
change his tastes to the most valuable wines, and in ten days would make
the wine-cellar look as if it had been wrecked at sea. What was to be
done with a gentleman of that kind? The butler said for his part he
wanted a master with habits, and he protested that Linton did not have a
habit to his name, at least, none that could properly be called a habit.

Barring the cook, the entire establishment agreed categorically with the
butler. The cook didn't agree because she was a very good cook indeed,
which she thought entitled her to be extremely aloof from the other
servants' hall opinions.

As for the squire's lady, they described her as being not much different
from the master. At least she gave support to his most unusual manner of
life, and evidently believed that whatever he chose to do was quite
co