The world allows that in a stone jar of Blackhampton Old Ale there are magic qualities; and far down in Bill himself was hidden some deep strain of independent manhood. The City records proved--vide Bazeley's famous Annals of Blackhampton, a second-hand copy of which was one of his most cherished possessions--that the name of Hollis had been known and honored in the town long before the name of Munt had been heard of. The Hollises were an old and distinguished Blackhampton clan. A William Hollis was mayor of the Borough in the year of the Armada. It was a family of wide ramifications. There was the great John Hollis the inventor, circa 1724-1798, there was Henry Hollis the poet, circa 1747-1801. Of these their present descendant was a kinsman so remote that the science of genealogy had lost track of their actual relationship. But beyond a doubt his father's uncle, Troop Sergeant Major William Hollis, had fought at Waterloo. He himself was named after that worthy, and the old boy's portrait and portions of his kit had long embellished the sitting room in Love Lane. It was then, perhaps, force of ancestry quite as much as the virtue of the Blackhampton ale that moved William Hollis to his sudden and remarkable act of self-assertion. For as Josiah Munt passed him, head in air, and weather eye fixed upon the western gables of Strathfieldsaye, his son-in-law stopped, swung round and called after him in a voice that could be heard even by the decorative artist at work on the gate-- "Sally out of Quod yet?" IV By not so much as the quiver of an eyelid did Mr. Munt betray that he had even heard, much less taken cognizance, of that which amounted to a studied insult on the part of William Hollis. The proprietor of the Duke of Wellington converged upon the gate of Strathfieldsaye with head upheld, with dignity unimpaired. He even cast one cool glance at the handiwork of the inspired Wickens, but made no comment upon it, while the artist suspended his labors, opened the gate obsequiously, and waited for the great man to pass through. But when Mr. Munt had walked along the carriage drive to within a few yards of his newly bedizened front door, he stopped all of a sudden like a man who has received a blow in the face. Had Bill Hollis at that moment been able to obtain a glimpse of his father-in-law he would have seen that his shaft had gone right home. A sternly domineering countenance was distorted with passion. There was a rage of suffering in the fierce yellow-brown eyes, there was a twist of half strangled torment in the lines of the hard mouth. As the lord of Strathfieldsaye stood clenching his hands in the center of the gravel he was not an attractive figure. Before entering the house he took off the white hat and soothed the pressure upon head and neck by passing over them a red bandanna handkerchief.