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on the people at Blackthorn. But they would send missionaries, in steeple hats and grey worsted stockings, to exhort with the godless. Being a hospitable sort of man, my grandfather’s uncle Godfrey would at least have admitted and fed them, except for the circumstance I was telling you of.
    Uncle Godfrey had a favourite bull terrier named Goblin. Now Goblin, everybody agreed, was a tolerably mild-mannered dog, as dogs go. Yet it so happened that the very sight of a clergyman of any sort seemed to drive him into a frenzy. Nobody could control him. No sooner would he see a steeple hat coming through the lodge gates and up the hill than down he would streak after it in a fury of cannibal glee.
    “Eh, Goblin,” they would all cry. “Parson, Goblin! Go it, boy!”
    And Goblin took that advice to the letter. He chased one nimble Man of God across two meadows, a cornfield, and the river, and finally treed him in the apple orchard; and the stablemen had to go down with pitchforks to get him off. My grandfather told me that this particular divine must have been the fastest sprinter in holy orders, because so fine a performance never occurred again. Anyhow, what with Goblin pursuing clergymen at the first sight or sniff of a square-toed shoe, and a standing bet with the head gardener as to which portion of each one’s anatomy would receive the most damage, I regret to say that Roderick Kinsmere was accorded no vast amount of ghostly counsel.
    Indeed, you will perceive that even for those times Blackthorn was considered a somewhat careless and demon-infested place. The village hanged a witch or two among our tenantry; but at Blackthorn they believed in witches, and regarded this as fair enough. Otherwise it was a lazy life. Nobody paid great heed to the weeds or nettles, or the fact that pigs would escape through the kitchens into the house; I can remember this occurring in my own time.
    When Buck Kinsmere returned after the Restoration, of course, they made some attempt to put a better face on it, because Buck Kinsmere was a great diplomat, and a fine soldier, and polished with the airs of court. Yet, beyond the few duties he would hold to, he seemed to take little interest.
    Sometimes he would assemble his household in the great oak library, which later was so much damaged by fire in sixteen-ninety-one, and he would offer up thanks for the safe return of Charles the Second, confusion to his enemies, and prayers for the soul of Charles the Martyr. The morning sun would just be touching the mullioned windows of the room, not lighting it greatly. My grandfather remembered him standing with his back to the hood of the tall stone fireplace, in his long curling hair and lace collar. His eyes would be shut, with one hand extended towards the windows, the gilt-edged prayer-book under his empty left sleeve; and the household all kneeling, silent, around him.
    Then sometimes he would take my grandfather into the main hall, to show him his pistols hung up on the wall, and his old breastplate with the rusty bloodstains upon it He would bid my grandfather never to forget two things: the loyalty he must bear to his king, and the memory of his mother who was dead. Buck Kinsmere said quietly that, when his son came of age, the boy must at length go to court among the noblemen, and that the inheritance from Roderick’s mother had made this possible.
    She must have been a clear-headed little lady, Mathilda Kinsmere. She had been Mathilda Depping, the shipman’s daughter; her father owned a stout fleet of merchant vessels which put out from the port of Bristol to trade in rum and slaves. When Edward Depping died, and she married my great-grandfather, Mathilda Kinsmere had the fleet sold so that there should be no taint of trade in the family; but she would not allow her husband to throw all her fortune as well as his own into the royal cause. Thus it came about that a part of this fortune, approximating ninety thousand pounds, was put into trust