"I thought so," said Mr. Hayes, and began to remind his niece of this thing and that which she was to be sure and show their visitor. "And the sooner you go the better," he added when the meal was over. "The days grow short." Barbara looked questioningly at Mr. Harding. "If you like to go----" "I shall be delighted, if you will allow me," said the young man, and a few minutes later they went together down the avenue. "The days grow short," Mr. Hayes had said, and everything about them seemed set to that sad autumnal burden. The boughs above their heads, the ground under foot, were heavy with moisture, the bracken was withered and brown, there were no more butterflies, but at every breath the yellowing leaves took their uncertain flight to the wet earth. The young people, each with a neatly furled umbrella, walked with something of ceremonious self-consciousness, making little remarks about the scenery, and Mr. Hayes, from his window, followed them with his eyes. "Rothwell, every inch of him," he said to himself, as Reynold turned and looked backward at the Place. "I never knew one of the lot yet who didn't think that particular family had a right to despise all the rest of the world. The only difference I can see is that this fellow despises the family too. Well, _let_ him! Why not? But, good Lord! what an end of all his mother's hopes!" And Mr. Hayes went back to his fireside--_his_, while John Rothwell was dodging his creditors on the Continent! There was unutterable dreariness in the thought of such a destiny, but the little old man regretted it with a complacent rubbing of his hands and a remembrance of Rothwell's arrogance. There is a belief, engendered by the moral stories of our childhood, that it is good for a man that his unreasonable pride should be broken--a belief which takes no heed of the chance that its downfall may hurl the whole fabric of life and conduct into the foulness of the gutter. Mr. Hayes naturally took the moral story view of a pride by which he had once been personally wounded; yet he wore a deprecating air, as if Fate, in too amply avenging him, had paid a compliment to his importance which was almost overpowering. It was more than a quarter of a century since Rothwell and he had been antagonists, though they had not avowed the fact in so many words, and Rothwell, with no honour or profit to himself, had baffled him. Herbert Hayes was then over forty and unmarried. The Mitchelhurst gossips had made up their minds that he would live and die a bachelor. But one November Sunday he came, dapper, bright-eyed, and self-satisfied, to Mitchelhurst church, gazed with the utmost propriety into his glossy hat, stood up when the parson's dreary voice broke the silence with "When the wicked man----" and, looking across at the Rothwells' great pew, met his fate in a moment.