Berrie Down Hollow, however, bore no traces of belonging to a person who held this peculiar doctrine regarding his own life. There was no disorder, no neglect. When once the gates swung back, friend and stranger alike beheld a place which was kept as well as Kemms’ Park:—where no weeds grew on the walks; where the grass was like a bowling-green; where crocuses and snowdrops filled the flower-beds in the early part of the year; where there was a blaze of scarlet geraniums, and a brilliant decking of white, and red, and purple verbena, of petunias and gladioli, lobelias, and all other plants that make our beautiful English summer more beautiful still. Never a litter of dead leaves was there about those walks; never a gate hung loose for want of hinge or screw; never a thing was left undone that willing hands could speedily put to rights; and yet there was an indescribable look of shortness of money, both within and without the dwelling, which those who were in the secrets of the family knew was attributable to absolute pecuniary poverty; for, although Arthur Dudley owned house and lands, stock and well-filled barns, he was poor as a gentleman with such possessions could be. And that was where the shoe pinched Squire Dudley. He had money’s worth, but not money. He paid no rent; he killed his fatted calves and his prime Southdowns; he brewed his own ale; his fowls were duly trussed for his table; he ate of the produce of his own lands, and drank of the only vintages English fields will yield; he had his goodly orchard, and his fair flower-gardens; he had his horses in the stable, and his colts running loose in the paddock; he had his broad meadows, and his rich pastures; he had still a young wife, and two children; he had sinned no grievous sin; he had no secret he feared being brought to light, yet he had “missed his life.” So he said, so his friends said, and the reason for this unusual unanimity of opinion chanced to be that he had no money. “Arthur was born to be a rich man,” said the elders among his kith and kin; but, if Nature had intended any such beneficial arrangement in his behalf, she frustrated her own design by permitting him to be born in the wrong house, and amongst the wrong people, and with the wrong temperament for much good fortune to befall him. After all, Nature does make these little mistakes occasionally, and each man and woman amongst the unsuccessful thinks he or she could have managed matters infinitely better for himself or herself, if only the disposition of affairs had been left in the hands of the person interested. Squire Dudley thought so, at any rate. He bore a grudge against Nature for having spoiled his worldly chances, which grudge he paid with interest to Nature’s representatives on earth—his fellow-creatures.