It was a satisfaction, too, to think that, when he died, his loved quarries on Leo’s Hill and his historic Leonian House should fall into the hands, not of these Ilchesters and Ilminsters and Evershots--families whose pretensions he hated and derided--but of an honest descendant of plain business men of his own class. It was Mrs. Romer, and not her husband, who uttered a lament that the House after their death should no longer be the property of one of their own name. She proposed that Gladys’ American should be induced to change his name. But Mr. Romer would hear nothing of this. His system was the old imperial Roman system, of succession by adoption. The man who could deal with the Legions, the man who was strong enough to suppress strikes on Leo’s Hill, and cope successfully with such rascals as this voluble Wone, was the man to inherit Nevilton! Be his patronymic what you please, such a man was Cæsar. Himself, a new-comer, risen from nothing, and contemptuous of all tradition, it had constantly been a matter of serious annoyance to him that the wealth he had amassed should only go to swell the pride of these fatuous landed gentry. It delighted him to think that Gladys’ children--the future inheritors of his labour--should be, on their father’s side also, from new and untraditional stock. It gave him immense satisfaction to think of disappointing Lord Tintinhull, who no doubt had long ago told his friends how sad it was that his son had got entangled with that girl at Nevilton; but how nice it was that Nevilton House should in the future take its proper place in the county. There was one cloud on Mr. Romer’s horizon at this moment, and that cloud was composed of vapours spun from the brain of his parliamentary rival, the eloquent Methodist. Mr. Wone had long been at work among the Leo’s Hill quarry-men, encouraging them to strike. Until the second week in July his efforts had been fruitless; but with the change in the weather to which we have referred, the strike came. It had already lasted some seven or eight days, when a Saturday arrived which had been selected, several months before, for a great political gathering on the summit of Leo’s Hill. This was a meeting of radicals and socialists to further the cause of Mr. Wone’s campaign. Leo’s Hill had been, for many generations, the site of such local gatherings. These gatherings were not confined to political demonstrators. They were usually attended by circus-men and other caterers to proletarian amusement; and were often quite as lively, in their accompaniments of feasting and festivity, as any country fair.