At the age of twenty-four, when scarcely through his training, he had been thrust into his father’s place by a blast of sudden death which carried off master, heir, and steward in the same month. The new lord was only just of age, and glad enough to have a Lancaster to lean on, so that before the young agent had learned to stand alone, he had the whole estate upon his shoulders. Thirteen years it was now since he took hold. Thirteen years since Jeffrey Kennet Cospatrick, tenth Baron Bluecaster, greeted his inheritance with a sigh. He was a kindly, shy young man, one of those puzzling natures that swing from an almost idiotic simple-mindedness to sudden touches of shrewdness; that take everybody at face-value three-fourths of the time, and for the rest can see through a stone wall. He had few near relations, and for the most part spent his flying visits to Bluecaster alone, but he always came when he was wanted, ready to face some traditional ordeal with a shy effort. He was generous, too--to a fault--but even in his most ultra-altruistic flights he could be made to listen to reason. Indeed, his faith in his agent was almost irritatingly sublime; there were times when the latter longed earnestly for a man who could see things steadfastly through his own eyes, Bluecaster leaned so heavily. Yet he knew himself wonderfully fortunate, and it was only when he was very wearied or worried, as he had been of late, that he felt his shoulders ache. It was scarcely strange that he should feel old; he had had so little time to be really young. There were drawbacks to being the son of a fine man, he thought occasionally. People expected you to start where your father left off, to keep up his standard of ripe experience where any other beginner would be busy learning from his own mistakes. The tenants had turned to him from the first with the personal confidence and affection that they had given his predecessor, scarcely realising that he had not yet grown to the full stature of control. He had gone through hard years, often troubling himself unnecessarily, but in the end he had won out. Before he was thirty he had come to father the whole lot of them, Bluecaster included. The trust was his dearest possession, but, serving it, he had missed his youth. His work was the breath of his life; its varied interests kept him keen and stimulated, but they increased continually, and every year new legislation made things more difficult for those engaged with land. The county, too, had claimed him, and he had yielded, inch by inch, to the fascination making almost the sole reward of the Great Unpaid. He had not had a holiday for years; he was too absorbed, too pressed, too afraid of getting behind. Besides, no other place called him. The whole of his heart was here.