wish to wring young Tom's neck. Mr.
Benthall, who had succeeded Mr. Ashurst
as head-master of the school, was soon
on excellent terms with Mr. Creswell, and
thus had an opportunity of getting an
insight into young Tom's character—an
opportunity which rendered him profoundly
thankful that that interesting youth was
no longer numbered among his scholars,
and caused him much wonderment as to
how Trollope, who was the curate of a
neighbouring parish, who had been chosen
for young Tom's private tutor, could
possibly get on with his pupil. Mr. Trollope,
a mild, gentlemanly, retiring young man,
with a bashful manner and a weak voice,
found himself utterly unable to cope with
the lout, who mocked at him before his
face and mimicked him behind his back,
and refused to be taught or guided by him
in any way. So Mr. Trollope, after speaking
to the lout's father, and finding but
little good resulting therefrom, contented
himself with setting exercises which were
never done, and marking out lessons
which were never learned, and bearing a
vast amount of contumely and unpleasantness
for the sake of a salary which was very
regularly paid.

It must not be supposed that his son's
strongly marked characteristics passed
unobserved by Mr. Creswell, or that they
failed to cause him an immensity of pain.
The man's life had been so hard and
earnest, so engrossing and so laborious,
that he had only allowed himself two
subjects for distraction, occasionally indulged
in: one, regret for his wife; the other,
hope in his son. As time passed away
and he grew older, the first lessened and
the other grew. His Jenny had been an
angel on earth, he thought, and was now
an angel in heaven, and the period was
nearing, rapidly nearing, when, as he
himself humbly hoped, he might be
permitted to join her. Then his son would
take his place, with no ladder to climb,
no weary heart-burning and hard slaving
to go through, but with the position
achieved, the ball at his foot. In Mr.
Creswell's own experience he had seen
a score of men, whose fathers had been
inferior to him in natural talent and
business capacity, and in luck, which was
not the least part of the affair, holding their
own with the landed gentry whose
ancestry had been "county people" for ages
past, and playing at squires with as much
grace and tact as if cotton-twist and coal-
dust were things of which they might have
heard, indeed, but with which they had
never been brought into contact. It had
been the dream of the old man's life that
his son should be one of these. The first
idea of the purchase of Woolgreaves, the
lavish splendour with which the place had
been rehabilitated and with which it was
kept up, the still persistent holding on to
business and superintending, though with
but rare intervals, his own affairs, all sprang
from this hope. The old gentleman's tastes
were simple in the extreme. He hated
grandeur, disliked society, had had far
more than enough of business worries.
There was plenty, more than plenty, for
him and his nieces to live on in affluence,
but it had been the dearest wish of his
heart to leave his son a man of mark, and
do it he would.

Did he really think so? Not in his
inmost heart. The keen eyes which had been
accustomed for so long to read human
nature like a book refused to be
hoodwinked; the keen sense used to sift and
balance human motives refused to be
paltered with; the logical powers which deduced
effect from cause refused to be stifled or led
astray. To no human being were Tom
Creswell's moral deficiencies and
shortcomings more patent than to his father; it
is needless to say that to none were they the
subject of such bitter anguish. Mr. Creswell
knew that his son was a failure, and
worse than a failure. If he had been merely
stupid there would have been not much to
grieve over. The lad would have been a
disappointment, as how many lads are
disappointments to fond parents, and that was
all. Hundreds, thousands of stupid young
men filled their position in society with
average success. Their money supported
them, and they pulled through. He had
hoped for something better than this for
his son, but in the bitterness of his grief he
allowed to himself that he would have been
contented even with so much. But Mr.
Creswell knew that his son was worse than
stupid; that he was bad, low in his tastes
and associations, sordid and servile in his
heart, cunning, mean, and despicable. All
the qualities which should have
distinguished him—gentlemanly bearing, refined
manners, cultivated tastes, generous
impulses—all these he lacked: with a desire for
sharp practice, hard-heartedness, rudeness
towards those beneath him in the social
scale, boorishness towards his equals, he
was overflowing. Lout that he was, he had
not even reverence for his father, had not
even the decency to attempt to hide his