“Well, I’m not having any, thank you, Beaumont. I pass this deal. I’ve no sort of fancy for passing a week in a country vicarage with a parson double-distilled or diluted. I know the kind of thing; family prayers at eight, croquet with the parsonettes till luncheon, cold mutton and rice pudding and small beer, inspection of the village school at three, yawn yourself to death till dinner, heavy joint, sodden pudding, cheap claret, family prayers again at ten, no beer, no baccy, no cards, unless its back-gammon or whist for penny points and no grog. A washed-out archdeaconess, gushing or prim daughters, a dozen of ’em, a cub of a son home from the local grammar-school, a noodle of a curate, and the devil and all to pay if you wink at the chambermaid. No thank you, Beaumont, you’re the man asked for, and ought to go. You can talk theology till you’re black in the face, and flirt mildly with the saintly misses, take it out of the curate generally, and perhaps shoot a rabbit or two if you fancy yourself with a gun,” concluded Sam, viciously. And so it came to pass that Edward Beaumont some three days later found himself in a market train crawling between Doncaster and Caisterholm, marvelling at the, to him, new and unaccustomed types he saw on the platforms or had for companions in his department—gentlemen farmers, with a horsey look, ponderous bucolics, farmers of their thousand acres, and slouching, sleepy peasants, with occasional glimpses of country Hebes, with tangled, tawny locks, blooming cheeks, cherry lips, dancing eyes of azure hue, bidding noisy farewells or boisterous greetings to bent and wrinkled parents as they left for or returned to their rural homes from domestic service in the colliery towns, where so many leave their roses and their innocency. As the train crept its leisurely way into the heart of the fen country, with its thorpes and long spires or hoary towers, its dykes and placid streams—the majestic Trent spanned and left many miles behind—its hazel groves, its clustered copses, its broad expanse of teeming soil, groaning in labour of the bearded barley and the golden wheat, Beaumont could scarcely realise that but a few hours’ journey had borne him from the rough, brown, bare, moor-crested hills of his home, with their streams all foul with the waste of the dye-pans, the sky greyed by the smoke of a legion of long and lean mill-chimneys, sallow, gaunt, eager-visaged, restless mill hands, rude and assertive of speech, clattering everywhere with clogged feet, all nerve, hurry, impatience, and irreverence. When he asked his whereabouts, and was told that the Parts of Holland lay to his left, he could have well-believed that he had slept and awoke in the flat land of Hans and Frau and schiedam. The talk, such as there was, of his companions for the first few miles had been of mangols and “’tates,” of beasts and calves, of tithes and rents, of bushels and loads, and the dreadful low prices ruling at the Corn Exchange in