THE NEW RECTOR BY STANLEY J. WEYMAN NEW YORK AMERICAN PUBLISHERS CORPORATION 310-318 Sixth Avenue Copyright 1891, BY UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY. _All rights reserved_ Contents CHAPTER I. “LE ROI EST MORT!” CHAPTER II. “VIVE LE ROI!” CHAPTER III. AN AWKWARD MEETING. CHAPTER IV. BIRDS IN THE WILDERNESS. CHAPTER V. “REGINALD LINDO, 1850.” CHAPTER VI. THE BONAMYS AT HOME. CHAPTER VII. THE HAMMONDS’ DINNER PARTY. CHAPTER VIII. TWO SURPRISES. CHAPTER IX. TOWN TALK. CHAPTER X. OUT WITH THE SHEEP. CHAPTER XI. THE DOCTOR SPEAKS. CHAPTER XII. THE RECTOR IS UNGRATEFUL. CHAPTER XIII. LAURA’S PROVISO. CHAPTER XIV. THE LETTERS IN THE CUPBOARD. CHAPTER XV. THE BAZAAR. CHAPTER XVI. “LORD DYNMORE IS HERE.” CHAPTER XVII. THE LAWYER AT HOME. CHAPTER XVIII. A FRIEND IN NEED. CHAPTER XIX. THE DAY AFTER. CHAPTER XX. A SUDDEN CALL. CHAPTER XXI. IN PROFUNDIS. CHAPTER XXII. THE RECTOR’S DECISION. CHAPTER XXIII. THE CURATE HEARS THE NEWS. CHAPTER XXIV. THE CUP AT THE LIP. CHAPTER XXV. HUMBLE PIE. CHAPTER XXVI. LOOSE ENDS. THE NEW RECTOR. CHAPTER I. “LE ROI EST MORT!” The king was dead. But not at once, not until after some short breathing-space, such as was pleasant enough to those whose only concern with the succession lay in the shouting, could the cry of “Long live the king!” be raised. For a few days there was no rector of Claversham. The living was during this time in abeyance, or in the clouds, or in the lap of the law, or in any strange and inscrutable place you choose to name. It may have been in the prescience of the patron, and, if so, no locality could be more vague, the whereabouts of Lord Dynmore himself, to say nothing of his prescience, being as uncertain as possible. Messrs. Gearns & Baker, his solicitors and agents, should have known as much upon this point as any one; yet it was their habit to tell one inquirer that his lordship was in the Cordilleras, and another that he was on the slopes of the Andes, and another that he was at the forty-ninth parallel—quite indifferently—these places being all one to Messrs. Gearns & Baker, whose walk in life had lain for so many years about Lincoln’s Inn Fields that Clare Market had come to be their ideal of an uncivilized country. And more, if the whereabouts of Lord Dynmore could only be told in words rather far-sounding than definite, there was room for a doubt whether his prescience existed at all. For, according to his friends, there never was a man whose memory was so notably eccentric—not weak, but eccentric. And if his memory was impeccable, his prescience— But we grow wide of the mark. The question being merely where the living of Claversham was during the days which immediately followed Mr. Williams’s death, let it be said at once that we do not know.