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way. That fine fellow has been propping up his father from ruin for the
last five or six years."

"He's a regular trump, is Adam," said Captain Donnithorne. "When I was
a little fellow, and Adam was a strapping lad of fifteen, and taught me
carpentering, I used to think if ever I was a rich sultan, I would make
Adam my grand-vizier. And I believe now he would bear the exaltation as
well as any poor wise man in an Eastern story. If ever I live to be a
large-acred man instead of a poor devil with a mortgaged allowance of
pocket-money, I'll have Adam for my right hand. He shall manage my woods
for me, for he seems to have a better notion of those things than any
man I ever met with; and I know he would make twice the money of them
that my grandfather does, with that miserable old Satchell to manage,
who understands no more about timber than an old carp. I've mentioned
the subject to my grandfather once or twice, but for some reason or
other he has a dislike to Adam, and I can do nothing. But come, Your
Reverence, are you for a ride with me? It's splendid out of doors now.
We can go to Adam's together, if you like; but I want to call at the
Hall Farm on my way, to look at the whelps Poyser is keeping for me."

"You must stay and have lunch first, Arthur," said Mrs. Irwine. "It's
nearly two. Carroll will bring it in directly."

"I want to go to the Hall Farm too," said Mr. Irwine, "to have another
look at the little Methodist who is staying there. Joshua tells me she
was preaching on the Green last night."

"Oh, by Jove!" said Captain Donnithorne, laughing. "Why, she looks as
quiet as a mouse. There's something rather striking about her, though. I
positively felt quite bashful the first time I saw her--she was sitting
stooping over her sewing in the sunshine outside the house, when I rode
up and called out, without noticing that she was a stranger, 'Is Martin
Poyser at home?' I declare, when she got up and looked at me and just
said, 'He's in the house, I believe: I'll go and call him,' I felt
quite ashamed of having spoken so abruptly to her. She looked like St.
Catherine in a Quaker dress. It's a type of face one rarely sees among
our common people."

"I should like to see the young woman, Dauphin," said Mrs. Irwine. "Make
her come here on some pretext or other."

"I don't know how I can manage that, Mother; it will hardly do for me
to patronize a Methodist preacher, even if she would consent to be
patronized by an idle shepherd, as Will Maskery calls me. You should
have come in a little sooner, Arthur, to hear Joshua's denunciation of
his neighbour Will Maskery. The old fellow wants me to excommunicate the
wheelwright, and then deliver him over to the civil arm--that is to say,
to your grandfather--to be turned out of house and yard. If I chose to
interfere in this business, now, I might get up as pretty a story of
hatred and persecution as the Methodists need desire to publish in
the next number of their magazine. It wouldn't take me much trouble to

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