168
WYLDER'S HAJVD.
was on the whole, little' doubt anywhere that the gentle-
man had received his congl and was hidkig his mortification
and healing his wounds in Paris or Vienna, or some other
suitable retreat.
But though the good folk of Gylingden, in general,
cared very little how Mark Wylder might have disposed
of himself, there was one inhabitant to whom his absence
was fraught with very serious anxiety and inconvenience.
This was his brother, William, the Vicar.
Poor William, sound in morals, free from vice, no dandy,
a quiet, bookish, self-denying mortal, was yet, when ho
took holy orders and quitted his chambers at Cambridge,
as much in debt as many a scamp of his college. He had
been, perhaps, a little foolish and fanciful in the article of
books. and had committed a serious indiscretion in the
matter of a carved oak bookcase; and, worse still, he
had published a slender volume of poems, and a bulkier
tome of essays, scholastic and theologic, both which ven-
tures, notwithstanding their merits, had turned out un-
happily; and worse still, he had lent that costly loan,
his sign manual, on two or three occasions, to friends in
need, and one way or another found that, on winding
up and closing his Cambridge life, his assets fell short
of his liabilities very seriously.
He had staved off some of his troubles by a little loan
from an insurance company, but the premium and the in-
stalments were disproportioned to his revenue, and indeed
very nearly frightful to contemplate. The Cambridge
tradesmen were growing minatory; and there was a stern
person who held a renewal of one of his old paper subsi-
dies to the necessities of his scampish friend Clarkson,
who was plainly a difficult and awful character to deal
with.
Dreadful as were the tradesmen's peremptory and wrath-