part, I suppose; you to the right hand, and I to
the left. You know there must come one dread
day when we must file away right and left. And
what our only foundation is, you and I know.
Good night, God bless you! God bless you,
Tillotson! To-morrow at twelve, then—or was
it nine? Good night!"

And after Mr. Tillotson was gone he remained
a long time at the garden gate, pensively looking
up at what he called "the wonderful works
of the Creator." Mr. Tillotson went home as
pensively, thinking, perhaps, of one other work to
him almost as wonderful.

CHAPTER XI. THE CRICKET

WHEN Mr. Tillotson got back to his White
Hart, he found by significant sounds that a party
of gentlemen were enjoying themselves, and that
these were the champions of the North Wiltshire
Club, who were about celebrating an anticipated
victory. Their captain, Pitcher, of whom one
of the military gentlemen had already spoken in
terms of praise, was in the chair. They kept
up their carousal very late, and prevented many
worthy guests from sleeping. But these revels
did not interfere with whatever waking dreams
were floating through Mr. Tillotson' s brain. He
was travelling back to that small house on the
common, which was so filled with its half a dozen
tenants, and yet where there was one that lived
all but solitary—more lonely even than if she
were living by herself in a great dismal shut-up
castle. For this miserable abandonment in a
crowd, for this desolation among many faces, he
had the deepest compassion and tenderness. It
came home to himself, and perhaps he was
thinking of that compassion, almost as tender and
pitying as his own, which he had seen in the
soft Scheffer face. The anxieties of the bank
were far away, or at least softened into the
distance.

The next morning, Mr. Tillotson went to business,
and to practical business. Before noon he
had found an excellent site for the future bank
—before noon, too, he had discovered a quiet,
sensible man of business, with good local
knowledge; and though Mr. Tilney had recommended
another, with infinitely higher qualifications, he
did not select him. He had found out, too,
the general resources of the place, weighed its
chances of going back or getting forward—the
last the most promising. There was a new
railway promised, a new market talked of; in short,
it was the soil for a great financial oak to strike
root in and flourish.

The same useful authority gave him some
useful hints as to the choice of local directors,
who were to sit, as it were, on the branches of
the great oak, and have an acorn or so for their
own private use. There was young Welbeck,
Lord Holyoake's son, a local hunting lord, who
was agricultural, and interested in the Condition
of the Poor and the Labouring Man's Dwellings,
and who moved in a sanitary cloud. The Hon.
Welbeck, who had nothing to do, and coming of
such a stock, would do well for a chairman. The
intelligent solicitor told him a good deal about
Mr. Tilney, whose name, after a good deal of
consideration, he was inclined to believe, would
not add strength to the direction. He was a
little embarrassed at discovering this, for he had
an uneasy instinct that his friend expected some
such proof of confidence in him.

"A little too much sherry, you see," said the
solicitor—"perfectly upright and honourable,
but, I should say, could not well depend on
himself."

And Mr. Tillotson saw, with some sorrow, that
it could not be done. For, through all that
mixture of natural religion, the late "Dook,"
the paternal interest, walking-stick, and brown
sherry, Mr. Tillotson saw a kind of good nature,
and some feeling, though it was all "humped"
and contorted by the constrained false and
fashionable postures he had been sitting in for
years. He wished he could do something for
this old soldier of fine life, and wished, as he
fancied, sincerely; but perhaps it was for the
sake of some one else—from a spirit of pleasant
self-delusion, which is common enough.

With this work he filled in the morning.
Meanwhile, on a green field, the Prado of the
town, a grand festival was being held. The sun
was bright, and streamed down on a white tent,
and on many bright bonnets, and parasols, and
shawls. The Northern Eleven, under the
captaincy of the famous Pitcher, were battling with
the military eleven. The band was drawn up
at one side, playing airs, and over the field were
dotted a few white figures in all the dandyism
of the game, "encumbered" with spikes in the
heels, and mysterious gloves, and greaves like a
Roman soldier's, while some stood with their
hands on their knees, appearing to be "offering
a back" to some one, but in reality only carrying
out the true proficient's attitude of the game.
According to long-established routine, the game
did not seem to advance very fast, for at about
intervals of two minutes the whole party seemed
about to break up and disperse, the white gentlemen
folding their arms and walking leisurely to
different parts of the field, crossing each other as
if they had had quite enough of the business, and
were going home. But in this they only meant
to shuffle themselves like cards, and create a
sort of variety. Every now and again came a
sharp crack when the white man at the wicket
struck the ball, which, by an instinct, produced
an electric spasm in every other white man far
and near, who stooped, and gave fresh and
sudden "backs," and swayed to the right and
left, and looked along the ground, all
expressing vigilance more or less. Sometimes the
ball slipped past the white man who was stopping,
and who had to go off in pursuit, and then
the two batsmen were seen "running" furiously,
and the whole company of far-off white men, in
a state of agitation, gesticulating, and looking
out nervously after their brother who was
pursuing the ball.