would have guessed it from his appearance. I remember my father once
sent me down to his workshop to get some glue, and I happened to
come when old Pontifex was in the act of scolding his boy. He had
got the lad- a pudding-headed fellow- by the ear and was saying,
"What? Lost again- smothered o' wit." (I believe it was the boy who
was himself supposed to be a wandering soul, and who was thus
addressed as lost.) "Now, look here, my lad," he continued, "some boys
are born stupid, and thou art one of them; some achieve stupidity-
that's thee again, Jim-  thou wast both born stupid and hast greatly
increased thy birthright- and some" (and here came a climax during
which the boy's head and ear were swayed from side to side) "have
stupidity thrust upon them, which, if it please the Lord, shall not be
thy case, my lad, for I will thrust stupidity from thee, though I have
to box thine ears in doing so," but I did not see that the old man
really did box Jim's ears, or do more than pretend to frighten him,
for the two understood one another perfectly well. Another time I
remember hearing him call the village rat-catcher by saying, "Come
hither, thou three-days-and-three-nights, thou," alluding, as I
afterwards learned, to the rat-catcher's periods of intoxication;
but I will tell no more of such trifles. My father's face would always
brighten when old Pontifex's name was mentioned. "I tell you, Edward,"
he would say to me, "old Pontifex was not only an able man, but he was
one of the very ablest men that ever I knew."

  This was more than I as a young man was prepared to stand. "My
dear father," I answered, "what did he do? He could draw a little, but
could he to save his life have got a picture into the Royal Academy
exhibition? He built two organs and could play the Minuet in Samson on
one and the March in Scipio on the other; he was a good carpenter
and a bit of a wag; he was a good old fellow enough, but why make
him out so much abler than he was?"

  "My boy," returned my father, "you must not judge by the work, but
by the work in connection with the surroundings. Could Giotto or
Filippo Lippi, think you, have got a picture into the Exhibition?
Would a single one of those frescoes we went to see when we were at
Padua have the remotest chance of being hung, if it were sent in for
exhibition now? Why, the Academy people would be so outraged that they
would not even write to poor Giotto to tell him to come and take his
fresco away. Phew!" continued he, waxing warm, "if old Pontifex had
had Cromwell's chances he would have done all that Cromwell did, and
have done it better; if he had had Giotto's chances he would have done
all that Giotto did, and done it no worse; as it was, he was a village
carpenter, and I will undertake to say he never scamped a job in the
whole course of his life."

  "But," said I, "we cannot judge people with so many 'ifs.' If old
Pontifex had lived in Giotto's time he might have been another Giotto,
but he did not live in Giotto's time."

  "I tell you, Edward," said my father with some severity, "we must
judge men not so much by what they do, as by what they make us feel
that they have it in them to do. If a man has done enough, either in
painting, music or the affairs of life, to make me feel that I might
trust him in an emergency he has done enough. It is not by what a
man has actually put upon his canvas, nor yet by the acts which he has
set down, so to speak, upon the canvas of his life that I will judge
him, but by what he makes me feel that he felt and aimed at. If he has
made me feel that he felt those things to be lovable which I hold
lovable myself I ask no more; his grammar may have been imperfect, but
still I have understood him; he and I are en rapport; and I say again,
Edward, that old Pontifex was not only an able man, but one of the
very ablest men I ever knew."

  Against this there was no more to be said, and my sisters eyed me to
silence. Somehow or other my sisters always did eye me to silence when
I differed from my father.

  "Talk of his successful son," snorted my father, whom I had fairly
roused. "He is not fit to black his father's boots. He has his
thousands of pounds a year, while his father had perhaps three
thousand shillings a year towards the end of his life. He is a
successful man; but his father, hobbling about Paleham Street in his
grey worsted stockings, broad brimmed hat and brown swallow-tailed
coat, was worth a hundred of George Pontifexes, for all his
carriages and horses and the airs he gives himself."

  "But yet," he added, "George Pontifex is no fool either." And this
brings us to the second generation of the Pontifex family with whom we
need concern ourselves.

   CHAPTER II

  OLD Mr. Pontifex had married in the year 1750, but for fifteen years
his wife bore no children. At the end of that time Mrs. Pontifex
astonished the whole village by showing unmistakable signs of a
disposition to present her husband with an heir or heiress. Hers had
long ago been considered a hopeless case, and when on consulting the
doctor concerning the meaning of certain symptoms she was informed
of their significance, she became very angry and abused the doctor
roundly for talking nonsense. She refused to put so much as a piece of
thread into a needle in anticipation of her confinement and would have
been absolutely unprepared, if her neighbours had not been better
judges of her condition than she was, and got things ready without
telling her anything about it. Perhaps she feared Nemesis, though
assuredly she knew not who or what Nemesis was; perhaps she feared the
doctor had made a mistake and she should be laughed at; from
whatever cause, however, her refusal to recognise the obvious arose,
she certainly refused to recognise it, until one snowy night in
January the doctor was sent for with all urgent speed across the rough