“What is it, Bristow, what is it?” said the Squire, graciously. “I shall be glad to listen to anything you may have to say.” “What I want you to do, sir,” said Tom, “is to have some plans at once drawn up, and have the foundations laid of a number of houses—twenty to thirty at the least—on Prior’s Croft.” “I thought you crazy about the mortgage,” said the Squire, with a twinkle in his eye. “Are you quite sure you are not crazy now?” “I am just as sane now as I was then.” “But to build houses on Prior’s Croft! Why, nobody would ever live in them. The place is altogether out of the way.” “That has nothing whatever to do with the question. If you will only take my advice, sir, you will get the foundations down without an hour’s unnecessary delay.” “And where should I be at the end of a month, when the contractor came to me for the first instalment of his money?” “All that can be arranged for without difficulty. Your credit is sound in the market, and that is the one thing indispensable.” “But what is to be the ultimate result of all these mysterious proceedings?” “Now you get me in a corner. But I must again crave your indulgence, and ask you to let the mystery remain a mystery a little while longer. If you have sufficient faith in me, why, take my advice. If not—you will simply be missing a chance of making an odd thousand or so.” “And that is what I can by no means afford to do,” said the Squire with emphasis. The result was that a week later some forty or fifty men were busily at work cutting the turf and digging the foundations for the score of grand new villas which Mr. Culpepper had decided on building at Prior’s Croft. Everybody’s verdict was that the Squire must be mad. New villas, indeed! Why there were hardly people enough in sleepy old Duxley to occupy the houses that fell vacant as the older inhabitants died off. “That may be,” said the Squire, when this plea was urged on his notice; “but I mean to make my villas so handsome, so commodious, and so healthy, that a lot of the old rattletrap dens will at once be deserted, and I shall not have house-room for half the people who will want to become my tenants.” So spoke the Squire, putting a brave face on the matter, but really as much in the dark as any one.