He had reason to be proud of himself; and really, putting aside a certain priggishness of manner and affectation of style, he was not such a very bad fellow. Take him out of the church, and he would have been a regular jolly fellow, who would have got along capitally in a mess room or in a hunting county, for he was dearly inclined to horseflesh, and had kept his two hunters at Swain's before he had "gone in" for the High Church party of "young Oxford." He was a short, well-built, straw-whiskered man of some eight and twenty, although almost boyish in manner and in face. He had pleased the dowager by the way in which he had officiated as curate during the long illness of the late incumbent, and she had determined to put him in the vacant pulpit, if only out of opposition, as has been observed before, to the Reverend Jabez Heavieman, whom she cordially detested. Herbert Pringle had therefore tumbled upon a snug thing. "His lines had fallen in pleasant places," so here he was inducted into the living of Hartwood. His first step was to set up housekeeping, in order to do which he had to bring his favourite little sister Lizzie from school to "keep house" for him, and then he set about making further improvements in his district, for which he had _carte blanche_ from the dowager, who, whenever she heard of some fresh innovation, thought to herself, "I wonder what that old hypocrite"--alluding to the Reverend Jabez--"thinks of that now!" The restoration of the church was effected at the new incumbent's especial request; and the brass lectern was given by the old lady because the young divine had munificently presented a huge painted window, the subject of which was a large cross, erected just over the chancel. Then a new harmonium was got in place of a wretched old "spinet," which had previously done duty for an organ, and a choir was regularly established from amongst the school children that sang the responses in church now every Sunday, its members clad in little dirty white surplices. He was all in favour of ceremonials, was the Reverend Herbert Pringle; and although he perhaps "meant well" according to his judgment, he was very affected, and "High Church" all through the service--to the intense astonishment of the farmers and poor labourers, who used to wonder at the new style of worship adopted in their old church, and be perplexed with all the bowings and genuflections, and especially with the white-surpliced choir. To give him his due, however, he did not preach a bad sermon, and had a very effective way of appealing to the pockets of his hearers when any charity required his aid; but he read always in a light, jocular, hurried manner, as if he were under an engagement to get over a certain portion of ground in a fixed time, and he always said, or intoned, "Awe-men" instead of Amen at the end of the prayers.