shape of an announcement that Mr. Thorne had sold the stones as building
materials, and that the workmen had already removed the most ancient and
interesting part. After which he would go slowly to his grave, dying of his
triumph and a broken heart."

It was all quite true, though Godfrey Hammond might have added that all the
execrations of the antiquarians would hardly have added to the burden of
shame and remorse of which Mr. Thorne would have felt the weight before the
last cart carried away its load from the trampled sward; that he would have
regretted his decision every hour of his life; and if by a miracle he could
have found himself once more with the fatal deed undone, he would have
rejoiced for a moment, suffered his old torment for a little while, and
then proceeded to do it again.

For a great part of Mr. Thorne's life the boast of his power over
Brackenhill had been on his lips more frequently than the twice a week of
which Hammond talked. Of late years it had not been so. He had used his
power to assure himself that he possessed it, and gradually awoke to the
consciousness that he had lost it by thus using it.

He had had three sons--Maurice, a fine, high-spirited young fellow; Alfred,
good-looking and good-tempered, but indolent; James, a slim, sickly lad,
who inherited from his mother a fatal tendency to decline. She died while
he was a baby, and he was petted from that time forward. Godfrey Thorne was
well satisfied with Maurice, but was always at war with his second son, who
would not take orders and hold the family living. They argued the matter
till it was too late for Alfred to go into the army, the only career for
which he had expressed any desire; and then Mr. Thorne found himself face
to face with a gentle and lazy resistance which threatened to be a match
for his own hard obstinacy. Alfred didn't mind being a farmer. But his