to Captain Monk what he thought of this act of oppression, and to protest against it. The beams of the setting sun, sinking below the horizon in the still autumn evening, fell across the stubbled fields from which the corn had not long been reaped; all around seemed to speak of peace.

To accommodate two gentlemen who had come from Worcester that day to Leet Hall on business, and wished to quit it again before dark, the dinner had been served earlier than usual. The guests had left, but Captain Monk was seated still over his wine in the dining-room when Mr. West was shown in. In crossing the hall to it, he met Mrs. Carradyne, who shook hands with him cordially.

Captain Monk looked surprised. "Why, this is an unexpected pleasure—a visit from you, Mr. Vicar," he cried, in mocking jest. "Hope you have come to your senses! Sit down. Will you take port or sherry?"

"Captain Monk," returned the Vicar, gravely, as he took the chair the servant had placed, "I am obliged for your courtesy, but I did not intrude upon you this evening to drink wine. I have seen a very sad sight, and I am come hoping to induce you to repair it."

"Seen what?" cried the Captain, who, it is well to mention, had been taking his wine very freely, even for him. "A flaming sword in the sky?"

"Your tenants, poor Thomas Bean and his wife, are being turned out of house and home, or almost equivalent to it. Some of their furniture has been seized this afternoon to satisfy the demand for these disputed taxes."

"Who disputes the taxes?"

"The tax imposed for the chimes was always a disputed tax; and—"

"Tush!" interrupted the Captain; "Bean owes other things as well as taxes."

"It was the last feather, sir, which broke the camel's back."

"The last feather will not be taken off, whether it breaks backs or leaves them whole," retorted the Captain, draining his glass of port and filling it again. "Take you note of that, Mr. Parson."

"Others are in the same condition as the Beans—quite unable to pay these rates. I pray you, Captain Monk—I am here to pray you—not to proceed in the same manner against them. I would also pray you, sir, to redeem this act of oppression, by causing their goods to be returned to these two poor, honest, hard-working people."

"Hold your tongue!" retorted the Captain, aroused to anger. "A pretty example you'd set, let you have your way. Every one of the lot shall be made to pay to the last farthing. Who the devil is to pay, do you suppose, if they don't?"

"Rates are imposed upon the parish needlessly, Captain Monk; it has been so ever since my time here. Pardon me for saying that if you put up chimes to gratify yourself, you should bear the expense, and not throw it upon those who have a struggle to get bread to eat."

Captain Monk drank off another glass. "Any more treason, Parson?"

"Yes," said Mr. West, "if you like to call it so. My conscience tells me that the whole procedure in regard to setting up these chimes is so wrong, so manifestly unjust, that I have determined not to allow them to be heard until the rates levied for them are refunded to the poor and oppressed. I believe I have the power to close the belfry-tower, and I shall act upon it."

"By Jove! do you think you are going to stand between me and my will?" cried the Captain passionately. "Every individual who has not yet paid the rate shall be made to pay it to-morrow."

"There is another world, Captain Monk," interposed the mild voice of the minister, "to which, I hope, we are all—"

"If you attempt to preach to me—"

At this moment a spoon fell to the ground by the sideboard. The Vicar turned to look; his back was towards it; the Captain peered also at the end of the rapidly-darkening room: when both became aware that one of the servants—Michael, who had shown in Mr. West—stood there; had stood there all the time.

"What are you waiting for, sirrah?" roared his master. "We don't want you. Here! put this window open an inch or two before you go; the room's close."

"Shall I bring lights, sir?" asked Michael, after doing as he was directed.

"No: who wants lights? Stir the fire into a blaze."

Michael left them. It was from him that thus much of the conversation was subsequently known.

Not five minutes had elapsed when a commotion was heard in the dining-room. Then the bell rang violently, and the Captain opened the door—overturning a chair in his passage to it—and shouted out for a light. More than one servant flew to obey the order: in his hasty moods their master brooked not delay: and three separate candles were carried in.

"Good lack, master!" exclaimed the butler, John Rimmer, who was a native of Church Dykely, "what's amiss with the Parson?"

"Lift him up, and loosen his neck-cloth," said Captain Monk, his tone less imperious than usual.

Mr. West lay on the hearthrug near his chair, his head resting close to the fender. Rimmer raised his head, another servant took off his black neck-tie; for it was only on high days that the poor Vicar indulged in a white one. He gasped twice, struggled slightly, and then lay quietly in the butler's arms.

"Oh, sir!" burst forth the man in a horror-stricken voice to his master, "this is surely death!"

It surely was. George West, who had gone there but just before in the height of health and strength, had breathed his last.

How did it happen? How could it have happened? Ay, how indeed? It was a question which has never been entirely solved in Church Leet to this day.

Captain Monk's account, both privately and at the inquest, was this: As they talked further together, after Michael left the room, the Vicar went on to browbeat him shamefully about the new chimes, vowing they should never play, never be heard; at last, rising in an access of passion, the Parson struck him (the Captain) in the face. He returned the blow—who wouldn't return it?—and the Vicar fell. He believed his head must have struck against the iron fender in falling: if not, if the blow had been an unlucky one (it took effect just behind the left ear), it was only given in self-defence. The jury, composed of Captain Monk's tenants, expressed themselves satisfied, and returned a verdict of Accidental Death.

"A false account," pronounced poor Mrs. West, in her dire tribulation. "My husband never struck him—never; he was not one to be goaded into unbecoming anger, even by Captain Monk. George struck no blow whatever; I can answer for it. If ever a man was murdered, he has been."

Curious rumours arose. It was said that Mrs. Carradyne, taking the air on the terrace outside in the calmness of the autumn evening, heard the fatal quarrel through the open window; that she heard Mr. West, after he had received the death blow, wail forth a prophecy (or whatever it might be called) that those chimes would surely be accursed; that whenever their sound should be heard, so long as they were suffered to remain in the tower, it should be the signal of woe to the Monk family.

Mrs. Carradyne utterly denied this; she had not been on the terrace at all, she said. Upon which the onus was shifted to Michael: who, it was suspected, had stolen out to listen to the end of the quarrel, and had heard the ominous words. Michael, in his turn, also denied it; but he was not believed. Anyway, the covert whisper had gone abroad and would not be laid.

III.

Captain Monk speedily filled up the vacant living, appointing to it the Reverend Thomas Dancox, an occasional visitor at Leet Hall, who was looking out for one.

The new Vicar turned out to be a man after the Captain's heart, a rollicking, jovial, fox-hunting young parson, as many a parson was in those days—and took small blame to himself for it. He was only a year