Upon the evening of the day on which his employers, Mr. and Mrs. Letham, had been miraculously elevated to the style and title of Lord and Lady Burdon, Egbert's hostility towards the world was at its height. From half-past three onwards, callers followed one another, or passed one another, over the Hillside threshold. Egbert was bone-tired. It was close upon seven when kindly Mrs. Archer, the doctor's wife, addressing him as he showed her out, inquired in her gentle way after his mother and passed down the path with a "Well, good night, Egbert!" "Good night, mum," Egbert muttered. He added in a lower but more devout key, "An' I yope ter Gawd yer the last of um." The cool air invited him to the gate and he leaned wearily over it, his bitterness of spirit increased by a boy who, spying him, cried, "Bang!" as he passed, "Bang!" in retort to Egbert's tongue thrust out in hatred and contempt across the gate, and "Bang! bang!" again, as the gathering evening took him in her trailing cloak. Egbert drew in his tongue with a groan of misery and hate, of indigestion and of weariness. An approaching footstep along the road caused him to thrust it out again and to keep it extended, armed lest the newcomer should be one of the bangers who irked his young life. It chanced to be his father, returning from work in the fields. Mr. Hunt paused opposite his son and gazed for a few moments at the outstretched tongue. At some pain to himself Egbert pressed it to further extension: the boy was a little short-sighted and in the gloom did not recognise his parent. "Tongue sore?" Mr. Hunt inquired, after a space. Recognising the voice, Egbert restored the member to his mouth. "Comes of tellin' a lie, so I've 'eard," said Mr. Hunt. Considerable sympathy was in his tone; but Egbert gave no more attention to this view of retributive justice than he had vouchsafed to the question preceding it. Father and son--neither greatly given to words when together--continued to regard each other solemnly across the gate. Presently Egbert jerked his head back at the house. "Heard about it?" he inquired. The news had long since permeated the village. Mr. Hunt said, "Ah!" and taking a step forward, gazed earnestly at the house, first on one side of Egbert's head and then on the other. His air was that of a man who, the inmates suddenly having reached the peerage, rather expected to see a coronet suspended from the roof or a scarlet robe fluttering from a window; and as he stepped back he said, "Ah!" again, in a tone that committed him, as a result of his observations, neither to complete surprise nor complete satisfaction. "Ah!" said Mr. Hunt, and shifted the spade he carried from his left hand to his right and waited. "Goin' to take me with 'em when they move to the 'Ouse o' Lords," Egbert announced. "Told me so, dinner time."