On both sides the stocks seem to have been of stern Puritan extraction, theologically narrow, inflexibly honest, terribly in earnest, of healthy life, fine physique—nonagenarians not infrequently. John Symonds, son to him whose wife forfeited succession to her brother, Mr Millington's fortune, because both men were sturdily obstinate in the matter of political creed, was, though a layman, great at extempore prayer and sermon-making. When any young man came a-wooing to one of his bonnie daughters, the father would take the suitor to an inner sanctum, there to be tested as to his ability to get through the like devotional exercises. If the young man failed to come up to the requisite standard he was dismissed, and the damsel reserved for some more proficient rival—James Hill being one of the latter sort. How many suitors of the present day would creditably emerge from that ordeal? Through this sturdy old Puritan we claim kinship with the Somersetshire family, of whom John Addington Symonds was one, and therefore with the Stracheys; while from other sources comes a collateral descent from “Hudibras” Butler, who seems to have endowed with some of his own genuine wit certain later Hills; as also a relationship with that line of distinguished medical men, the Mackenzies, and with the Rev. Morell Mackenzie, who played a hero's part at the long-ago wreck of the _Pegasus_. A neighbour of James Hill was a recluse, who, perhaps, not finding the society of a small provincial town so companionable as the books he loved, forbore “to herd with narrow foreheads,” but made of James a congenial friend. When this man died, the task fell to his executors, James Hill and another, to divide his modest estate. Among the few bequests were two books to young Tom, James's son, a boy with a passion for reading, but possessed of few books, one being a much-mutilated copy of “Robinson Crusoe,” which tantalisingly began with the thrilling words, “more than thirty dancing round a fire.” The fellow executor, knowing well the reputation for uncanny ways with which local gossip had endowed the deceased, earnestly advised his colleague to destroy the volumes, and not permit them to sully young Tom's mind. “Oh, let the boy have the books,” said James Hill, and straightway the legacy was placed in the youthful hands. It consisted of a “Manual of Geography” and Euclid's “Elements.” The effect of their perusal was not to send the reader to perdition, but to call forth an innate love for mathematics, and, through them, a lifelong devotion to astronomy, tastes he was destined to pass on in undiminished ardour to his third son, the postal reformer.