CHAPTER V. MARTIN GURWOOD'S RECKONING WITH HIMSELF. It was full time that Martin Gurwood returned to Lullington, for his parishioners had begun to grow impatient at his absence. Although, as we have already shown, the Vicar could not be called popular amongst them, having no tastes in common with theirs and rather aweing them with his dignified reserve, the good people of Lullington had become accustomed to their parson's ways, and were disposed t-o overlook what they thought the oddity of his manners in consideration of his bountiful kindness and the strict fidelity with which he discharged the duties of his office. He was not one of their own sort; he was not a 'good fellow;' there was nothing at all free-and-easy about him; no jokes were cracked before him; no harvest-home suppers, no Christmas merry-makings found him among the assembled company. But the farmers, if they did not like their Vicar, respected him most thoroughly, and thought it something to have amongst them a man on whose advice on all spiritual matters (and in all worldly matters, few indeed though they be, in which honour and honesty are alone concerned) they could fully and firmly rely. So that when Martin Gurwood, on his mother's invitation, went up to London in the autumn of the year, intending to stop there but a very few weeks, the churchwardens and such others of his parishioners as he deigned to take so far into his confidence, were sincere in expressing their wishes for his speedy return. But if the inhabitants of Lullington were sorry for their pastor's departure at the time of his leaving them, much more bitterly did they regret it after they had had a little experience of his locum tenens. The gentleman who had temporarily undertaken the spiritual care of the Lullingtonians was a man of birth and ability, an old college friend of Martin Gurwood, and emphatically a scholar and a gentleman. He had married when very young, and had a large family; he was miserably poor, and it was principally with the view of helping him that Martin had requested him to fill his place during his absence. Mr. Dill was only too glad to find some place which he could occupy rent-free, and where he had a better chance of being able to work undisturbed by the racket of his children than in the noisy lodging in town. So he moved all his family by the third-class train, and in less than an hour after their arrival the boys were playing hockey on the lawn, the girls were swinging in the orchard, Mrs. Dill was in her usual state of uncertainty as to where she had packed away any of the 'things,' and Mr. Dill, inked up to the eyebrows and attired in a ragged grey duffel dressing-gown, was seated in Martin Gurwood's arm-chair hard at work at his Greek play.