And, the room having been cleared, as it were, of the heretical element, the atmosphere of music once more settled down solidly on that studio in the West End. CHAPTER II. Squire Raleigh was a philanthropist. But philanthropy in town is a costly amusement, and Squire Raleigh had a large family, whose claims could not comfortably be ignored in favor of charitable institutions, although a philanthropist with a love for mankind cannot be expected to do as much for his own children as an ordinary domesticated egoist. Nevertheless, after the endowment of an orphan asylum, and the failure of a Liberal newspaper speculation, and the gift of a public park to the people had been followed by the reduction of his income to one-third of its original value, the vigorous reformer yielded to the persuasions of his sons and his lawyers and retired to his country estate, with a knighthood, a troublesome liver, and a firm resolve to get to the bottom of the land question. At Murville Manor, an old Georgian house standing near a quaint little village in one of the home counties, Sir Marcus Raleigh once more tried to forget the disagreeable facts of an income with decreasing resources and a family of increasing claims, and plunged into fresh philanthropic schemes, this time relating to small holdings, and the growth of potatoes for the million, and the advancement in general of the agricultural laborer. Such energy naturally brought the enthusiast into collision with his own farming tenants, who liked to preserve the monopoly of grumbling to themselves, and although not hesitating to complain of the difficulties of making their land pay, yet objected strongly to having small portions of it wrested from them and given to their own laborers instead, who throve upon them straightway. It likewise bred strained relations between the Squire and the old rector, who in his own way of Sunday-schools, and coal clubs, and relief funds, was a philanthropist of an old world form, and could not understand why the traditional supporter of church charities should prefer to invent charities of his own and allow the church to fall into debt meanwhile. His family also, who had not inherited philanthropic tendencies, failed to appreciate the unselfishness of their father in this direction, and complained with the grossest individualism of the want of pocket money. They complained, too, of being forced to exchange a town life, where they could at least sink their father's personality in the oblivion of society, for a country one, where it was impossible to remain unknown for miles round, where philanthropy was cheap and therefore more rife than before, and where a large staff of men-servants was replaced by a so-called handy man. The handy man, by the way, in spite of advertising himself in the county paper as competent to look after "pony, cart, garden, boots, knives, fifteen shillings a week, Sundays, and beer,"