to dissipate any impression his offended manner might have given, and
went home.

It is not often a man estimates at all correctly the effect of his own
words and looks; he would need to be a trained actor to do this, and,
happily, most men are not their own looking-glasses. Trenholme thought
he had behaved in a surly and stiff manner, and, had the subject been
less unpleasant, he would rather have explained at once where and who
his brother was. This was his remembrance of his call at the hotel, but
the company there saw it differently.

No sooner had he gone than the facetious man launched his saw-like voice
again upon the company. "He had private information on the subject, _he
had_."

"There's one sure thing," said a stout, consequential man; "he believes
the whole thing, the Principal does."

A commercial traveller who was acquainted with the place put in his
remark. "There isn't a man in town that I wouldn't have expected to see
gulled sooner."

To which a thin, religious man, who, before Trenholme entered, had
leaned to the opinion that there were more things in the world than they
could understand, now retorted that it was more likely that the last
speaker was gulled himself. Principal Trenholme, he asserted, wasn't a
man to put his faith in anything without proofs.

Chellaston was not a very gossiping place. For the most part the people
had too much to do, and were too intent upon their own business, to take