It is a nice, contented, comforting, reassuring creed this for any human being to hold. It makes a man utterly dissatisfied with his lot, while it leaves him only too well satisfied with himself. He is, so he thinks, as competent to take his leaps as the best in the land; and when in succession he misses every one, he still believes it was only the fault of the steed he rode, of the groom who did not girth his horse tight enough, of the saddler who sent him in reins which broke in his fingers, of the nature of the ground, of the labourer who staked the hedge, of the proprietor who wire-fenced the field. Other men go flying over every obstacle, and gallop past him to the goal all are striving to reach, while he labours wearily after, or lies maimed and shattered beside the first gate. Yet, mark you, this is never his fault; it is his “cursed luck,” to quote Arthur Dudley over again. Providence, in his inmost heart the Squire considered, had a spite against him from his mother’s womb, and consequently, and by reason only of this injustice on the part of Providence, he failed where others succeeded. In the world’s great workshop he was a very bad workman, and, accordingly, he was eternally complaining of his tools. His fellows moved up in the social scale, but he never rose a step higher. With a rusty nail one picked the lock of Fortune’s treasure casket; but then, as Arthur Dudley truly observed, _that_ rusty nail never came into his hands. With sledge and hammer, and file and chisel, common drudges, as they seemed to him, bought their estates and took rank in the country. His schoolfellows—mere idiots he had thought some of them then—mere idiots, indeed, he thought them still, had climbed great parts of the steep hill of worldly success, and were talked of as rising men in the pulpit, at the bar, in the hospitals, in literature, science, and art. There was Holland, for instance, who went with him to Oxford. Well, Holland had no brains, any more than most of the people Squire Dudley knew, and yet he had somehow obtained a capital post under Government, lived at the West End, and had married a beautiful young widow with, rumour said, many thousands a year. There was Morris, also, a man without a sixpence, without appearance, connection, manner, friends, or father or mother to speak of, and yet he, even he——. But it is useless to continue the catalogue. Fate had helped every one, except Squire Dudley, on in the world, and Squire Dudley did not in the least believe that every man’s Nemesis is himself.