So it had gone on for ten generations. Cronky had been succeeded by his son and by his son's son, and so on. To be Gloomster of the Isle of Man had by habit become the prerogative of the Gudehart family until the present, when Christian Goodheart found himself summoned before the Bishop to show cause why he should not be removed. Hitherto the Gloomster had given satisfaction. It would be hard to point to one of them--unless we except Eric Goodheart, the one who changed the name from Gudehart to Goodheart--who had not filled the island with that kind of sorrow that makes life seem hardly worth living. Eric Goodheart had once caught his father, "Bully Gudehart," as he was called, in a moment of forgetfulness, doing a kindly act to a beggar at the door. A wanderer had appeared at the door of Nightmare Abbey in a starving condition, and Eric had surprised the Gloomster in the very act of giving the beggar a piece of apple-pie. The father found himself suddenly confronted by the round, staring eyes of his son, and he was frightened. If it were ever known that the Gloomster had done a kindly thing for anybody, he might be removed, and Bully Gudehart recognized the fact. "Come here!" he cried brutally, to Eric, as the beggar marched away munching hungrily on the pie. "Come here, you brat! Do you hear? Come _here_!" The boy was coming all the while. "You saw?" "Yes, your Honor," he replied, "I saw. The man said he was nearly dead with hunger, and you gave him food." "No," roared the Gloomster, full of fear, for he knew how small boys prattle, "I did not give him food! _I gave him pie!_" "All right, your Majesty," the boy answered. "You gave him pie. And I see now why they call you Bully. For pie is bully, and nothing less." "My son," the Gloomster responded, seizing a trunk-strap and whacking the lad with it forcefully, "you don't understand. Do you know why I fed that man?" "Because he was dying of hunger," replied the lad, ruefully, rubbing his back where the trunk-strap had hit him. "Precisely," said the Gloomster. "If I hadn't given him that pie he'd have died on the premises, and I can't afford the expense of having a tramp die here. As it is, he will enjoy a lingering death. _That was one of your mother's pies._" Eric ran sobbing to his room, but in his heart he believed that he had detected his father in a kindly act, and conceived that a Gloomster might occasionally relax. Nevertheless, when he succeeded to the office he was stern and unrelenting, in spite of the fact that occasionally there was to be detected in his eye a glance of geniality. This was doubtless due to the fact that from the time of his intrusion upon his father's moment of weakness he was soundly thrashed every morning before breakfast, and spanked before retiring at night, as a preliminary to his prayers.