Hillary was conscious that he was falling in the estimation of his brother-in-law. He was chafed by the sense of his indebtedness to him. He saw no way of escape from the debt he owed save by Taverner’s death, and he began to have a lurking hope of release in that way. He was not stimulated to activity. ’What is the advantage of making a labour of life,’ he asked—not of his brother-in-law—’when a man has a comfortable property, and another in reversion?’ The great day of all, on which the kindly relations of the brothers-in-law were brought forward and paraded before the parish, was on the feast day of Coryndon’s Charity. Then Hillary Nanspian arrived arm-in-arm with Taverner Langford, Hillary in his badger-skin waistcoat with red lappets, Taverner in dark homespun, with black cravat and high collar. As they walked down the village every man touched his hat and every woman curtsied. When they came to a puddle, and puddles are common in the roads of Bratton Clovelly, then Hillary Nanspian would say, ’Take care, Taverner, lest you splash your polished boots and dark breeches.’ Thereupon the brothers-in-law unlinked, walked round the puddle, and hooked together on the further side. At the dinner, which was attended by the Rector, who sat at the head and carved, the waywarden and the overseer, the landlord of the ’Ring of Bells,’ where the dinner was held, and several of the principal farmers, ex-feoffees, or feoffees in prospective, speeches were made. Hillary, with a glass of rum-and-water and a spoon in it, stood up and spoke of his fellow-churchwarden and feoffee and brother-in-law in such a rich and warm speech, that, under the united influence of hot strong rum, and weak maudlin Christianity, and sound general good-fellowship, and goose and suet pudding, the tears rose into the eyes of the hearers, and their moral feelings were as elevated as if they had heard a sermon of Mr. Romaine. After that, Taverner proposed the health of his co-feoffee and churchwarden in a nervous, hesitating speech, during which he shuffled with his feet on the floor, and his hands on the table, and became hot and moist, and almost cried—not with tender emotion, but with the sense of humiliation at his own inability to speak with fluency. But, of course, all present thought this agitation was due to the great affection he bore to his brother-in-law. When Parson Robbins, the Rector, heard of the quarrel, he was like one thunderstruck. He could not believe it. ’Whatever shall I do? I shall have to take a side. Mercy on us, what times we live in, when I am forced to take a side!’ As to the farmers generally, they chuckled. Now at last there was a chance of one of them getting into Coryndon’s Charity and getting a lease of the poor’s lands.