and had been no more seen among the oaks whose name he bore. And the
people, in spite of his name, regarded him as an interloper. To them,
with their short memories and scanty knowledge of the past, Amedroz was
more honourable than Belton, and they looked upon the coming man as an
intruder. Why should not Miss Clara have the property? Miss Clara had
never done harm to any one!

Things got back into their old grooves, and at the end of the third
month the squire was once more seen in the old family pew at church. He
was a large man, who had been very handsome, and who now, in his yellow
leaf, was not without a certain beauty of manliness. He wore his hair
and his beard long; before his son's death they were grey, but now they
were very white. And though he stooped, there was still a dignity in
his slow step a dignity that came to him from nature rather than from
any effort. He was a man who, in fact, did little or nothing in the
world whose life had been very useless; but he had been gifted with
such a presence that he looked as though he were one of God's nobler
creatures. Though always dignified he was ever affable, and the poor
liked him better than they might have done had he passed his time in
searching out their wants and supplying them. They were proud of their
squire, though he had done nothing for them. It was something to them
to have a man who could so carry himself sitting in the family pew in
their parish church. They knew that he was poor, but they all declared
that he was never mean. He was a real gentleman was this last Amedroz
of the family; therefore they curtsied low, and bowed on his
reappearance among them, and made all those signs of reverential awe
which are common to the poor when they feel reverence for the presence
of a superior.

Clara was there with him, but she had shown herself in the pew for four