WYLDER'S H.iJVD.
and often most cruelly and most artfully, when he frankly
fancied his conduct most praiseworthy.
And really I do not myself know, that, considering
poor William's liabilities and his means, and how many
chances there were against that reversion ever becoming a
fact, that I would not myself have advised his selling itt
if a reasonable price were obtainable.
The poor Vicar and his little following were got pretty
well into the Furcae Caudinse. Mr. Jos Larkin, if he did
not march him out, to do him justice, had had no hand in
primarily bringing him there. There was no reason, how-
ever, why the respectable lawyer should not make whatever
was to be fairly made of the situation. The best thing
for both was, perhaps, that the one should sell and the
other buy the reversion. Larkin had no apprehensions
about the nature of the dealing. I think it was Lawyer
Larkin's private canon, in his dealings with men, that
everything was moral that was not contrary to an Act of
Parliament
CHAPTER LIII.
BRANDON CHAPEL ON SUNDAY.
For a month and three days Mr. Jos Larkin was left
to ruminate without any new light upon the dusky land-
scape now constantly before his eyes. At the end of that
time a foreign letter came for him to the Lodge. It was
not addressed in Mark Wylder's hand — not the least like
it. Mark's was a bold, free hand, and if there was noth-
ing particularly elegant, neither was there anything that