Mr. Battishill had sunk into a condition of mental feebleness and bodily exhaustion that engaged his daughter’s constant attention. The old man could not be left alone. He no longer rose from his bed to take his old seat in the hall. When Herring came back from Upaver, he went upstairs to the Squire’s room, where he found Cicely knitting, and he sat there for an hour talking to the sick man, trying to interest him in what was going on at the mine. After dinner with Cicely in the hall, he went up again, and read Shakespeare to Mr. Battishill. The Squire was always ready for that. He had his favourite passages, and these he repeated after Herring, but his power to follow the movement of a scene and to distinguish characters was gone. Old familiar sentences caught his ear, and he murmured them after Herring, as he might follow a prayer, but his mind did not take in the sense. Yet he never wearied of this Shakespeare reading; it was like well-remembered melodies striking his ear and lulling him to sleep. When the Squire had had enough, he always laid his thin hand across the book, and said in the words of Coriolanus, ’I am weary; yea, my memory is tired.’ Then Cicely, John Herring, and Joyce knelt together by the old man’s bed, and he folded his hands and said the one familiar prayer; and then Cicely and the rest bade him good night and left him. Sometimes the old man would become uneasy, and ask John whether he would protect Cicely. ’You will always stand by her, will you not, John?’ Herring was obliged to give him the assurance he required. ’You are my children.’ ’Yes, sir; brother and sister.’ ’Brother and sister,’ repeated Cicely. Then the old man murmured, ’And she is fair, and, fairer than that word, of wondrous virtues.’ The Vicar of Tawton, the Reverend Harmless-Simpleton, was frequent in his calls. He was an amiable and well-intentioned man. The Simpletons are a large family, that have never thriven at the bar, in medicine, in the army and the navy, but the Harmless-Simpletons (the two surnames united by a hyphen) have for several generations made the Church their happy hunting ground. They have gone up in the Church like corks in water. The fattest livings, prebendal stalls, and even bishoprics have been showered upon them. As Napoleon won all his battles by one rule, so the Harmless-Simpletons acquired promotion by one simple principle. In the field of doctrine they never taught a truth without first treating it as a taxidermist treats a frog, killing, disembowelling, then blowing out the fleshless, boneless skin with wind, and varnishing the empty nothing. In the field of morals they never attacked a real enemy, but discharged their parks of ordnance, brought down charges of heavy dragoons, and displayed the most skilful strategy against imaginary foes.