For, all the anger that he was balked of feeling against his wife, because he missed her so, was added to that already felt against his son. By the last post came a letter from General Pendyce. He opened it with fingers as shaky as his brother's writing. “ARMY AND NAVY CLUB. “DEAR HORACE, “What the deuce and all made you send that telegram? It spoiled my breakfast, and sent me off in a tearing hurry, to find Margery perfectly well. If she'd been seedy or anything I should have been delighted, but there she was, busy about her dresses and what not, and I dare say she thought me a lunatic for coming at that time in the morning. You shouldn't get into the habit of sending telegrams. A telegram is a thing that means something--at least, I've always thought so. I met George coming away from her in a deuce of a hurry. I can't write any more now. I'm just going to have my lunch. “Your affectionate brother, “CHARLES PENDYCE.” She was well. She had been seeing George. With a hardened heart the Squire went up to bed. And Wednesday came to an end.... And so on the Thursday afternoon the brown blood mare carried Mr. Pendyce along the lane, followed by the spaniel John. They passed the Firs, where Bellew lived, and, bending sharply to the right, began to mount towards the Common; and with them mounted the image of that fellow who was at the bottom of it all--an image that ever haunted the Squire's mind nowadays; a ghost, high-shouldered, with little burning eyes, clipped red moustaches, thin bowed legs. A plague spot on that system which he loved, a whipping-post to heredity, a scourge like Attila the Hun; a sort of damnable caricature of all that a country gentleman should be--of his love of sport and open air, of his “hardness” and his pluck; of his powers of knowing his own mind, and taking his liquor like a man; of his creed, now out of date, of gallantry. Yes--a kind of cursed bogey of a man, a spectral follower of the hounds, a desperate character--a man that in old days someone would have shot; a drinking, white-faced devil who despised Horace Pendyce, whom Horace Pendyce hated, yet could not quite despise. “Always one like that in a hunting country!” A black dog on the shoulders of his order. 'Post equitem sedet' Jaspar Bellew!