Mr. Meetkerke was, as I have said, an active magistrate. But only one instance of his activity in this respect dwells in my recollection. I remember to have seen, in the nondescript little room that he called his study, a collection of some ten or a dozen very nasty-looking pots, with some white pasty looking substance in each of them, and to have wondered greatly what mystery could have been attached to them. I learned from the butler’s curt word of information that they were connected with my uncle’s magisterial duties, and my mind immediately began to construct all kinds of imaginings about wholesale poisonings. I had heard the story of the “Untori” at Milan, and had little doubt that we were in the midst of some such horrible conspiracy. A few days later I learned that the nasty-looking pots were the result of a magisterial raid among the bakers, and contained nothing worse than alum. These reminiscences of Julians and its little world recurred to me when speaking of my father’s financial position at the time he took a farm at Harrow and built a handsome house on another man’s land. He was at that time Mr. Meetkerke’s declared heir, and would doubtless have inherited his property in due time had childless old Mrs. Meetkerke lived. But one day she unexpectedly took off her green habit for the last time, and in a day or two was laid under yet more perennial green in the little churchyard! Mr. Meetkerke was at that time over sixty. But he was as fine an old man physically as anybody could wish to see. Before long he married a young wife, and became the father of six children! It was of course a tremendous blow to my father, and never, as I can say from much subsequent information, was such a blow better or more bravely borne. As for myself, I cannot remember that the circumstance impressed me as having any bearing whatsoever on my personal fate and fortunes. In after years I heard it asserted in more than one quarter that my father had in a great measure himself to thank for his disappointment. He was a Liberal in politics after the fashion of those days, (which would make excellent Conservatism in these,) while Mr. Meetkerke was a Tory of the very oldest school. The Tory uncle was very far indeed from being an intellectual match for his Liberal nephew, and no doubt used to talk in his fine old hunting-field voice a great deal of nonsense which no consideration of either affection, respect, or prudence, could induce my father to spare. I fear he used to jump on the hearty old squire very persistently, with the result _à la longue_ of ceasing to be a _personâ gratâ_ to the old man. It _may_ be that had it been otherwise he might have sought affection and companionship elsewhere than from a young wife. But ...!