“Do you mean to say that Mr. Puddicombe is still in Coombe-in-Teignhead?” “Certainly. When he returned from Waterloo, as the place was called where was that cock-fight, and he got into some sort of difficulty, he came back to his own house. He got it through his wife, who was an Eastlake--my cousin. It is his own now, and he has private means, so he intends setting up a school. It will be very select; only well-to-do parents’ children will be admitted. When they let Mr. Puddicombe out of gaol at Waterloo, which is somewhere in the Midlands,--leastways in England,--then the people here were for ringing a peal to welcome him home. The parson put the keys in his pocket and went off. They came to me. I am churchwarden, and I knocked open the belfry door. We gave Puddicombe a peal, and the rector wasn’t over-pleased. I am churchwarden, and that is something. You see, Mr. Puddicombe has means, and a house he got through my cousin Eastlake. I don’t know how the school will be kept up now that the rector has had Puddicombe turned out of it. None of the farmers will subscribe. We have no resident squire. He will have to make up your salary out of his own pocket. He is not married, so he can well afford it. If he don’t consult our feelings, I don’t see why we should consider his pocket. None of us wished to lose Solomon Puddicombe; everyone trusted him, and he was greatly respected.” Again the schoolmaster looked round him. A sense of helplessness had come over him. Again his eye encountered that of Kate, and he instinctively understood that this girl felt for him in his difficulties and humiliation, and understood how trying his position was. “Now for a bit of our old stag,” said Pasco. “Stag?” exclaimed Bramber; “that is fowl!” “What you call fowl, is stag to us. He crowed till his voice cracked. He may be tough because old, but he’s been long boiling.” “Oh, a cock!” Bramber learned that day that a cock in Devonshire is entitled stag.