The vicar's wife, Mrs. Codling, had several daughters whom, like a judicious mother, she was anxious to marry well. These the Captain had deigned to notice somewhat in the course of his long visits at the Grange while Sally's destruction was in progress. At church more than once his greedy eye had rested on the vicar's pew with a hard gaze of admiration, and on week days his footsteps had begun to stray towards the vicarage often enough to set Mrs. Codling's brain a-scheming. It would be indeed a triumph, she felt, if the heir of Squire Wiseman could be got to marry one of her daughters. But that was a job which needed the most delicate handling, for if Lady Harriet got wind of her designs, the consequences would be more than Mrs. Codling felt able to face. At the best the parson's daughter would have been considered no fit match for so great a personage as this ill-doing guardsman, but, as things were, the very idea of such a marriage would have been received at the Grange with unutterable scorn. Times were in many ways changed with the vicar since that day now long past, when his soft, fat hands were uplifted in holy repulsion of the horrible rabbit-slaying criminal who stood before him doomed. For one thing he had gathered a family around him, and for another he had been overtaken by poverty--a poverty that came of greed. The living of Ashbrook was worth in money about L250 a year, and there was a good vicarage with a large garden and paddock, so that altogether Mr. Codling was as well off in the country as he would have been with L500 a year in town. To this income, itself above starvation point many degrees, Mrs. Codling had added an income of nearly L2,000, which made the home more than comfortable. A contented man would have been very happy with such a provision, judged even by the standard of the _Spectator_, which admires Christianity with a well filled purse, but Mr. Codling wanted more, like most parsons. One would think from the eagerness shown by such to possess themselves either of rich wives or of large incomes made out of nothing, that somehow Christianity and poverty are things that cannot exist together. Luxury is certainly essential to the true faith of the majority of modern parsons. Without it they shrivel up, grow morose, full of evil thoughts, such as envy and malice, and instead of an example are a warning.