THE day after Christmas Day was friendly to the fox; in other words, a hard frost; and since Miss Rose Aynton and Letty had declined to play at billiards with Walter until the afternoon—for it is vicious (in the country) to indulge in that pastime in the morning, as it is to play at cards before candle-light—that young gentleman, being no reader, felt the time rather heavy on his hands, and strolled into the village to get rid of it. The snow had ceased to fall, but not before, like a good housekeeper when the family has left town, it had covered up everything very carefully, except the tops of the chimneys, through which the tidings of good-cheer rolled forth in dusky columns from every cottage; for there were no abject poor in Mirk, thanks to my Lady, or any that lacked victuals at that joyous season.

The Lisgards had ever been a free-handed race, as generous out of doors as hospitable within; and their influence for good had been felt for generations throughout the village. I do not say that they expected no repayment; their rule was paternal, and they looked for something like filial obedience in return. If a villager had passed any member of that august family without pulling his hair, as though it were a bell-handle, in token of respect, it would have been considered a sign of revolution, and they would have congratulated themselves that the yeomanry were in a state of efficiency. The feudal system was still in vogue at Mirk, but tempered not only by excellent beef-tea in sickness, and port wine from the Abbey cellar during convalescence, but by the best Gothic architecture, as applied to cottages. If eleven human beings did sometimes sleep in a single room, and the domestic arrangements were inferior to those which Mr Chifney of the Farm provided for his race-horses, the tenement looked outside very picturesque, as seen from the Abbey windows. Nay, it must be owned that even this inconvenience of overcrowding was rare in the home-village, in comparison with other places on the Lisgard estate, not so near the family seat, about which everything was in externals, at least, becomingly spick and span.

Dr Haldane, indeed, who had property of his own, and could afford to entertain political opinions at variance with those in favour at the Abbey, had been of old accustomed irreverently to adapt a certain popular nursery ballad to the state of things at Mirk.

Who built the infant school so red?

Who set that striking-clock o'erhead,

To tell us all the time for bed?

The Lisgards.

Who made, and at such great expense,

Around our pond that iron fence,

To keep the pigs and boys from thence?

The Lisgards, &c.

In short, Mirk was a pet hamlet, and exhibited a hundred tokens of its patron's favour. It was surely only right and proper, therefore, that all the votes in the village at election-time, except the doctor's, went the same way with the squire's, and that even in social matters he exercised unquestioned sway. Mirk was as respectable as the brotherhood of Quakers, and was rendered so by the same simple machinery; any one in the place who shewed a disposition to be otherwise was immediately turned out. Did a man drink, so as to cause public disturbance, or pick up sticks (to save himself trouble) out of the park-fences—or, worse than all, did he Poach—were it but a pheasant's egg—he received the most peremptory notice to quit the model village. The issuing of these ukases of banishment had been, now and then, a severe trial to the popularity of the Lisgards; but it had overlived all such acts—nay, more, even its favouritism, that seemingly indispensable element of the feudal system, had been forgiven it. Nobody now complained that George Steve, who notoriously never went to bed quite sober, still continued tenant of the Lisgard Arms; while Jacob Flail and Joseph Dibble had been condemned, with their families, to banishment for life for a less habitual commission of the same offence.

Much less did it strike the villagers that it was inconsistent in a landlord, so careful for the morality of his people, to let so large a portion of the Abbey Farm to a trainer of race-horses, of which there were at present upwards of thirty in Mirk; and in summer, when the Downland above was fit for their exercise, there were often twice as many. But then Mr Chifney was not like an ordinary trainer; nor did his jockey-boys, thanks to his strict supervision, behave like ordinary jockey-boys. They attended divine service on alternate Sundays, and half-a-dozen of them were in the choir. Mr Mosely (who was Anglican) had even taken into consideration the advisability of putting these last into surplices, but Mr Chifney had dissuaded him from that experiment. They had always been accustomed to the most tight-fitting of garments, strait-waistcoats, buck-skin breeches, and gaiters—and perhaps he thought the transition would be too abrupt. Their habits, in some other respects, were loose, and yet they were suffered to breathe the Lisgard air. Mr Chifney's boys were like the servants of ambassadors at foreign courts, who enjoy a separate jurisdiction from that to which the native inhabitants submit. The law itself—at least in the case of petty offences—was not called in to punish these young gentlemen; but I believe they were “colted”—for the whole discipline was “horsey”—by Mr Chifney's head-groom. I do not know the exact manner in which this chastisement was inflicted, but it must have differed from the ordinary method, since they never failed to pursue their daily equestrian duties as usual. Mr Chifney looked after that himself, and exceedingly sharp. Nothing went amiss through oversight in his establishment, and his employers had every reason to put confidence in him. He left no means untried to insure the success of the costly animals it was his mission to groom and guard. His very acceptance of the post of churchwarden had been described by his enemies as an attempt to “hedge”—to make friends with those powers of good which are generally supposed, to be antagonistic, if they have anything to do with it at all, to the profession of horse-racing. It is certain that Mr Chifney, whose occupations seldom permitted his own attendance at public worship, never failed to come to church upon those Sundays which immediately preceded the Derby and the St Leger, and indeed it is very likely that he treated them (without knowing it) as the eves of his patron saints' days.

It was to the Abbey Farm that Mr Walter Lisgard was now bound; for to the young gentlemen of England, what is a more interesting spectacle than a racing-stable—what is a more charming subject of conversation than the next Great Event? And who more fitted to afford every information upon that important topic—if he chose—than Mr Tite Chifney? If he chose. Therein lay the whole matter; for Mr Chifney was reticent, as became one intrusted with a hundred thousand pounds' worth of horseflesh, upon whose performances depended perhaps, in the aggregate, millions of money. He had put “Master Walter” up to a “good thing,” however, more than once, and the captain had no doubt but that he would do it again. He never did doubt of his own success either with man or woman. Confidence, but without swagger, self-content, but without vanity, were evident enough in those handsome features, illuminated almost at all times with the desire to please. He lit his cigar at the hall-door, smoothed away a fallen spark from his sealskin waistcoat, and took his way down the leafless avenue, humming the latest lively air, as he crunched the snow beneath his dainty boots. How different from Sir Richard's measured step and haughty silence, thought the gatekeeper's wife, as she hastened out of the lodge, from the side-window of which she had marked her favourite approach. “Never mind me, Martha,” cried he laughing; “I'm tall enough now to lift the latch for myself. My boots are thicker than yours are—look—and I have no rheumatism, which, I am afraid, you have not quite got rid of yet. There—I won't speak a word with you till you go inside. How's the guidman? Ah, out, is he? How's little Polly? Hullo, Polly, how you're grown! Why, I daresay she won't kiss me now, as she always used to do.”

“Oh yes, she'll kiss you, Master Walter,” answered the old dame; “there's no harm in kissing o' you; although I wouldn't say that to my daughter of ne'er another young man in the county.—Come, lass, you need not blush so, for I've had many a one from the same young gentleman.” And the old dame laughed and chuckled, until that dread enemy of honest-hearted mirth, the lumbago, twitched her into her chair.

Polly, a very pretty country lassie, about sixteen, stood pink and hesitating while the captain removed his cigar, and waited—smiling demigod—for the promised favour.

“Come, gi'e it to him, and ha' done wi' it,” cried the old lady, exasperated by her torments. Thereupon the girl stepped forward, head aside. Master Walter met her, touched her soft cheek with his lip, and as his silken moustache brushed her ear, whispered an airy something which turned her crimson. There was nothing in the words themselves save the merest compliment; their magic lay in the tone of him who used them; so tender, yet so frank, so familiar, and yet so gracious. Then, with a smile, he bade them both “good-bye,” and strolling through the gate, resumed his interrupted ditty, as though kissing were the most innocent as well as the most natural of all pastimes; but Polly pressed her throbbing brow against the pane for its very coolness, and watched him saunter down the village street with quite a flutter at her heart, and promised to herself that she would not forget the captain's kiss—no, not though Joe, the under-gardener, should speak his mind next “feast” (as it was rumoured in well-informed circles that he intended to do), and “keep her company” in earnest.

That she was doing no wrong in this was certain, for not only her mother, but everybody else in Mirk, agreed that there was no sort of harm in Master Walter, let him do what he might. He had a way of doing things so very different from others. How the very dogs fawned upon him as he sauntered on, and the old horse in the straw-yard stretched its gray head over the gate in hopes of a caress as he went by! How the boys by the roadside left their Snow-man an unfinished torso, and ran to make their bows before the good-natured captain, with an eye to largesse, in the form of a copper scramble; and how the school-girls courtesied, with admiring awe, as they pictured to themselves how fine a figure handsome Master Walter must needs cut in gold and scarlet! He had a nod or a word for almost everybody, young or old; but if his look but lit upon another's face, it left a pleasure there, as the Sun leaves when it has shone upon one. Delayed by these reciprocal manifestations of good-will, like a young prince making a Royal Progress among a well-affected people, Walter Lisgard at length got free of the village, and climbing a steep hill (never used by the race-horses even in much less slippery weather), arrived at his destination, the Abbey Farm. This was a long, low, ancient building, belonging to one could scarce tell what date, so pieced, and restored, and added to, had been the original structure; but when the Abbey was an Abbey, the Abbey Farm had been a sort of branch-establishment, in the occupation of the monks; there were traces of their sojourn even now: over the pointed porch yet stood a cross of stone, though broken; and in the garden, now all white and hoar, that lay between the house and road, there was a mighty sundial, carved like a font with noseless saints in niches, and round the rim a scripture, of which alone the words nox venit could be deciphered. The night had come, not only upon those who built and blessed such things, but on the faith which they professed. The very memory of themselves and it had faded from men's minds. Not one in ten at Mirk—where all had owned the Abbot for liege-lord, and bowed their heads before his meanest monk, in token of their soul's humility, but a few centuries back—not one in ten, I say, could tell even what that niche on the south side of the communion-table meant, which the learned called Piscina. The mighty bower that had once been the granary of the Abbey, and to which the poor had looked with thankful eyes in times of scarcity, still stood beside the homestead, but the remembrance of its very use was gone; the only legend clinging to its moss-grown walls was that a Long Parliament had once held its sittings there. Save the farmhouse and the barn, all relics of the past had been swept away. Immediately behind them was quite a town of stables and loose boxes, all of the most modern construction, and furnished with the latest inventions for equine comfort. The enormous farmyard, strewn with a thick carpet of clean straw, was now the exercising-ground for the horses; but in the summer, a gate at the back of the premises opened immediately upon the grassy upland, the proximity of which had tempted Mr Tite Chifney to pitch his tent and enlarge his boundaries at the Abbey Farm. So high had been the rent he offered for this eligible situation, that the late Sir Robert had removed his own agricultural head-quarters elsewhere, and suffered Mr Chifney and his race-horses to occupy the whole place, which was now the capital of the Houwhyhims—the largest establishment in Great Britain, wherein man held the secondary position, and the Horse the principal.