There was not a soul for miles round, as far as the distant town to which he went to market twice a month, who did not know Christmas Williams to be a just, upright man, and, above all, a man of his word. His word was as good as another man's oath. His father had kept the village inn before him, and had borne the same character. His grandfather, too, had been landlord, churchwarden and constable; an honest, plodding man. The house, with its wainscotted walls, and its large, open kitchen, spacious enough to hold comfortably all the men in the village; the office of churchwarden, with its close connection with the rector; and the post of constable, making him the official guardian of the public peace: all these had become almost as hereditary as the estates of the duke, who owned a good part of the county. The duke was not prouder of his descent and name than was Christmas Williams. It was a peaceful, pretty village, with low round hills encircling it, their soft outlines stretching across the sky, with coppices of young larch-trees and dark Scotch firs climbing up their slopes. The air, sweeping over a thousand meadows, where cowslips and buttercups grew in profusion, bore no slightest taint of the smoke of cities. A soft tranquility seemed to brood over the place in almost unbroken silence. The grey old church, with no charm about it except its age, wore a look of idleness and disuse, as if it had done with active service, and was resting before settling down into ruins. Even on Sundays the doors yawned merely to admit a handful of old-fashioned, steady-going people, who listened sleepily to the old rector, as he read to them one of Blair's Sermons, out of a volume from his library, not even taking the decent trouble of making a manuscript copy of it. The rector was an unmarried man, with few ideas beyond the pursuit of country pleasures, which he had followed so long that they had mastered him, and now held him in utter bondage. He was keen after a fox, and could not keep away from a coursing match. His parishioners saw much more of him in Christmas Williams' snug fireside corner than in his desk and pulpit. Who can tell how the mischief crept in? Little by little, step by step; first a Sunday-school class in Widow Evans' cottage; a quiet prayer-meeting or two; then an afternoon preaching. A change was coming over the village; or, more truly speaking, over a small portion of the villagers, but those were the steadiest and best. Christmas took no notice of it at first; and the rector cared for none of those things.