But by this time Mr. Wittingham was in such a state of agitation that it was evident he would hear nothing further that was said to him at the moment, and therefore the good doctor stopped short. The magistrate covered his eyes; he wrung his hands hard together; he gazed forth at the sky; he even wept. "Then it is all over, all over," he cried, at length, "it is all over," by which he meant that all his dreams of importance, his plans of rural grandeur and justice-of-the-peaceism, his "reverence" on the bench and at the quarter-sessions, his elevation as a country gentleman, and his oblivion as a small trader, were all frustrated, gone, lost, smothered and destroyed by his son's violent conduct and his own indiscreet babbling in the moment of fear and grief. "Ah, Doctor Miles," he said, "it's a sad business, a sad business. As you know it all, there is no use of my holding my tongue. Harry did do it; and, indeed, he told me before that he would do it, or something like it; for he came here--here, down into Tarningham, and told me on the very bench, that if I pushed that business about Mrs. Clifford's carriage any further it should go worse with me. It was a threat, my dear doctor, and I was not to be deterred from doing my duty by a threat, and so I told him, and immediately took up the man they call Wolf, on suspicion--for Sir John had been down here, swearing at my door, and what could I do, you know." Now Doctor Miles had seen a great deal of the world, and, though a good and benevolent man, and one not at all inclined to think the worst of one of his fellow-creatures, yet he could not help seeing that there was a great deal of weakness and eagerness to shuffle any burden from himself in Mr. Wittingham's reply. There are certain sorts of knowledge which force themselves upon our understanding, whether we will or not, and amongst these is discrimination of human character. People, long accustomed to the world, find great difficulty even in believing a practised liar, however much they may wish to do so on certain points. They see through, in spite of themselves, all the little petty artifices with which self hides itself from self, and still more clearly through the mean policy by which the mean man strives to conceal his meanness from the eyes of his fellow-creatures. Whether it be the pitiful man, in any of the common walks of life, exacting more than his due, and striving to hide his greed under the veil of liberality and disinterestedness, whether it be the candidate, on the canvass or on the hustings, escaping from the explanation of his intentions upon the plea of independence and free judgment, or whether it be the minister of the crown evading the fulfilment of obligations, or shrinking from the recognition of support by all the thousand subterfuges in the vast dictionary of political dishonesty, the man learned in the world's ways, however willing to be duped, cannot believe and confide, cannot admire and respect. The case with