Mr. Rayburn was the manager of Messrs. Hopper and Mason's great brewery in a town called Hemsborough, in the northern part of Staffordshire. He had filled this very responsible post for many years, inhabiting the comfortable apartments over the great gateway of the brewery. He was a very matter-of-fact man, without much sentiment about him, and on getting his good appointment he had married, choosing his wife carefully, with a view to being made comfortable and leading a peaceable life. And his quiet, docile wife had never, in all her uneventful life, had an idea beyond her simple round of womanly duties, which she did to perfection, until her only child was about six years old, when she suddenly took a severe illness and died in a few days. They had been married for many years before Fred was born, and Mr. Rayburn had no idea how to manage the child; so he sent him to school, and got on alone as best he could. Presently the servant trained by his wife married, and another came in her place, not trained by his wife, or, indeed, by any one else. Still, the poor man existed somehow, nor did any idea of a change suggest itself to him until Fred left school, and got a clerkship in the counting-house, living of course with his father. Judith Ames, the servant, greatly resented the additional trouble thus given her: particularly was she annoyed because Fred, instead of falling into the regular round of habits which his father had adopted, and which made him "such a quiet, dependable master, for what he did one day, he did every day, and so a body knew where to have him." Instead of copying his worthy father in this, Fred ran up and down the stone stairs by which the "Gatehouse" was reached, about a dozen times every evening, and always unexpectedly. Also, he played football and cricket, according to the season; he took long walks, coming home muddy and hungry, giving endless trouble, and demanding food at inconvenient times. Moreover, he did what his father never did. He popped into the kitchen, surprising Judith and some friends at tea, using the best china and partaking of a much daintier meal than ever found its way into the master's parlour. Fred told his father that Judith was cheating him; he complained of her dirty, untidy ways and her bad cooking, and poor Mr. Rayburn, who had long ceased to be comfortable, now found the other desire of his heart out of the question, for to live at peace was impossible to one member of a family of three when the other two were always quarrelling.