over others that she thus exercised dominion. In acquiring that power
she had also acquired the much greater power of exercising rule over
herself.

But why should her father have been ignored in these family
arrangements? Perhaps it may almost suffice to say, that of all living
men her father was the man best conversant with the antiquities of the
county in which he lived. He was the Jonathan Oldbuck of Devonshire,
and especially of Dartmoor, without that decision of character which
enabled Oldbuck to keep his womenkind in some kind of subjection, and
probably enabled him also to see that his weekly bills did not pass
their proper limits. Our Mr. Oldbuck, of Oxney Colne, was sadly
deficient in these. As a parish pastor with but a small cure, he did
his duty with sufficient energy, to keep him, at any rate, from
reproach. He was kind and charitable to the poor, punctual in his
services, forbearing with the farmers around him, mild with his brother
clergymen, and indifferent to aught that bishop or archdeacon might
think or say of him. I do not name this latter attribute as a virtue,
but as a fact. But all these points were as nothing in the known
character of Mr. Woolsworthy, of Oxney Colne. He was the antiquarian
of Dartmoor. That was his line of life. It was in that capacity that
he was known to the Devonshire world; it was as such that he journeyed
about with his humble carpet-bag, staying away from his parsonage a
night or two at a time; it was in that character that he received now
and again stray visitors in the single spare bedroom--not friends asked
to see him and his girl because of their friendship--but men who knew
something as to this buried stone, or that old land-mark. In all these
things his daughter let him have his own way, assisting and encouraging
him. That was his line of life, and therefore she respected it. But
in all other matters she chose to be paramount at the parsonage.