agriculture, and the scent of the furrow brought all his energies
into feverish activity--activity which soon impoverished him: that
was in the order of things. 'Ungainly integrity' and 'headlong
irascibility' wrought the same results for the ex-dispenser as for
the Ayrshire husbandman. His farming came to a chaotic end; and when
the struggling man died, worn out at forty-three, his wife and
children (there was now a younger boy, Oliver, named after the
Protector) had no very bright prospects.

Things went better with them than might have been anticipated. To
Mrs. Peak her husband's death was not an occasion of unmingled
mourning. For the last few years she had suffered severely from
domestic discord, and when left at peace by bereavement she turned
with a sense of liberation to the task of caring for her children's
future. Godwin was just thirteen, Oliver was eleven; both had been
well schooled, and with the help of friends they might soon be put
in the way of self-support. The daughter, Charlotte, sixteen years
of age, had accomplishments which would perhaps be profitable. The
widow decided to make a home in Twybridge, where Miss Cadman kept a
millinery shop. By means of this connection, Charlotte presently
found employment for her skill in fine needlework. Mrs. Peak was
incapable of earning money, but the experiences of her early married
life enabled her to make more than the most of the pittance at her
disposal.

Miss Cadman was a woman of active mind, something of a busy-body--
dogmatic, punctilious in her claims to respect, proud of the
acknowledgment by her acquaintances that she was not as other
tradespeople; her chief weakness was a fanatical ecclesiasticism,
the common blight of English womanhood. Circumstances had allowed