CHAPTER III

Forcus's Family Ale


It was the period when to rob a poor man--or a rich one, for that
matter--of his beer would have been a crime to arouse to furious expression
the popular sense of justice; when beer was on the master's table as well
as in the servants' hall; when every cellar of the well-to-do held its
great cask for family consumption, and no one had thought of attempting to
convert the poor man from indulgence in his national beverage. It was the
period when brewers made huge fortunes--and that in spite of the fact that
they used good malt and hops in their brewings--nor dreamed, save, perhaps,
in their worst nightmare, of the interference of Government in their
monopoly. In Brockenham and its county the liquor brewed at the Hope
Brewery was considered the best tipple procurable. Nothing slipped down the
local throat so satisfactorily as Forcus and Son's Family Ale; and the
present representatives of the firm were easily the wealthiest people in
the town.

There were but two of them at the time: Francis Forcus--Sir Francis, for
the last twelve months, he having been knighted in the second year of his
mayoralty on the visit of a Royal Personage to his native town--and
Reginald, his brother, born twenty years after himself of his father's
second marriage, and now in his twenty-fourth year. Very good-looking, very
good-natured, very gay and friendly and accessible the younger brother was.