the old tapestry worked by Maud Carruthers, whose husband was killed in the service of Mary Stuart--all the carvings and gildings about the house, all the stained glass in the windows, all the arms and quartering and crests upon the family plate--all whispered to the present representative of the family that he was Carruthers of Poynings, and as such had only to make a very small effort to find life no very difficult matter, even for a person scantily endowed with brains. He tried it accordingly--tried it when a young man, had pursued the course ever since, and found it successful. Any latent suspicion of his own want of wisdom had vanished long since, as how, indeed, could it last? When Mr. Carruthers took his seat as chairman of the magisterial bench at Amherst, he found himself listening with great admiration to the prefatory remarks which he addressed to the delinquent in custody before passing sentence on him, unconscious that those remarks only echoed the magistrate's clerk, who stood close behind him whispering into his ear. When, as was his regular custom, he walked round the barn, where, on rent-days, the tenants were assembled at dinner, and heard his health proposed in glowing terms, and drunk with great enthusiasm--for he was a good and liberal landlord--and when he addressed a few conventional words of thanks in reply, and stroked his white whiskers, and bowed, amidst renewed cheering, how should a thought of his own shortcomings ever dawn upon him? His shortcomings!--the shortcomings of Mr. Carruthers of Poynings? If, indeed, in his earlier days there had been a latent belief in the existence of anything so undesirable and so averse to the proper status of a county magnate, it had long since died out. It would have been hard and unnatural, indeed, for a man so universally respected and looked up to, not to give in to the general creed, and admit that there were undoubted grounds for the widespread respect which he enjoyed. There are two kinds of "squires," to use the old English word, who exercise equal influence on the agricultural mind, though in very different ways. The one is the type which Fielding loved to draw, and which has very little altered since his time--the jocund sporting man, rib-poking, lass-chin-chucking franklin, the tankard-loving, cross-country-riding, oath-using, broad-skirted, cord-breeched, white-hatted squire. The other is the landed proprietor, magistrate, patron of the living, chairman of the board of guardians, supporter of the church and state, pattern man. Mr. Carruthers of Poynings belonged to the latter class. You could have told that by a glance at him on his first appearance in the morning, with his chin shaved clean, his well-brushed hair and whiskers, his scrupulously white linen, his carefully tied check neckcloth, his portentous collars, his trimmed and polished nails. His very boots creaked of position and respectability, and his large white waistcoat represented unspotted virtue.