For the first time there was a breach in the Squire's defences, which for three years he had kept up almost intact. He had put literature, and art, and the joys of the connoisseur between himself and the measureless human ill around him. It had spoilt his personal life, had interfered with his travels, his diggings, his friendships with foreign scholars. Well, then, as far as he could he would take no account of it, would shut it out, and rail at the men and the forces that made it. He barely looked at the newspapers; he never touched a book dealing with the war. It seemed to him a triumph of mind and intelligence when he succeeded in shutting out the hurly-burly altogether. Only, when in the name of the war his private freedom and property were interfered with, he had flamed out into hysterical revolt. Old aristocratic instincts came to the aid of passionate will, and, perhaps, of an uneasy conscience. And now in the man's vain but not ignoble soul there stirred a first passing terror of what the war might do with him, if he were _forced_ to feel it--to let it in. He saw it as a veiled Presence at the Door--and struggled with it blindly. He was just turning back to the house, when he saw a figure approaching in the distance which he recognized. It was that of a man, once a farmer of his, and a decent fellow--oh, that he confessed!--with whom he had had a long quarrel over a miserable sum of money, claimed by the tenant when he left his farm, and disputed by the landlord. The dispute had gone on for two years. The Squire's law-costs had long since swallowed up the original money in dispute. Then Miss Bremerton, to whom the Squire had dictated some letters in connection with the squabble, had quietly made a suggestion--had asked leave to write a letter on approval. For sheer boredom with the whole business, the Squire had approved and sent the letter. Then, this very morning, a reply from the farmer. Grateful astonishment! 'Of course I am ready to meet you, sir--I always have been. I will get my solicitor to put what you proposed in your letter of this morning into shape immediately, and will leave it signed at your door to-night. I trust this trouble is now over. It has been a great grief to me.' And now there was the man bringing the letter. One worry done with! How many more the same patient hand might have dealt with, if its exacting owner hadn't thrown up her work--so preposterously!