But he had denied that the property had done him any good, and was loud in declaring that the entail had done the property and those who lived on it very much harm.  In his hearts of hearts he did feel a desire that when he was gone the acres should still belong to a Caldigate.  There was so much in him of the leaven of the old English squirarchic aristocracy as to create a pride in the fact that the Caldigates had been at Folking for three hundred years, and a wish that they might remain there; and no doubt he knew that without repeated entails they would not have remained there.  But still he had hated the thing, and as years rolled on he came to think that the entail now existing would do an especial evil.

His son on leaving school spent almost the whole four months between that time and the beginning of his first term at Cambridge with the Babingtons.  This period included the month of September, and afforded therefore much partridge shooting,—­than which nothing was meaner in the opinion of the Squire of Folking.  When a short visit was made to Folking, the father was sarcastic and disagreeable; and then, for the first time, John Caldigate showed himself to be possessed of a power of reply which was peculiarly disagreeable to the old man.  This had the effect of cutting down the intended allowance of L250 to L220 per annum, for which sum the father had been told that his son could live like a gentleman at the University.  This parsimony so disgusted uncle Babington, who lived on the other side of the county, within the borders of Suffolk, that he insisted on giving his nephew a hunter, and an undertaking to bear the expense of the animal as long as John should remain at the University.  No arrangement could have been more foolish.  And that last visit made by John to Babington House for the two days previous to his Cambridge career was in itself most indiscreet.  The angry father would not take upon himself to forbid it, but was worked up by it to perilous jealousy.  He did not scruple to declare aloud that old Humphrey Babington was a thick-headed fool; nor did Humphrey Babington, who, with his ten or twelve thousand a-year, was considerably involved, scruple to say that he hated such cheese-paring ways.  John Caldigate felt more distaste to the cheese-paring ways than he did to his uncle’s want of literature.

Such was the beginning of the rupture which took place before the time had come for John to take his degree.  When that time came he had a couple of hunters at Cambridge, played in the Cambridge eleven, and rowed in one of the Trinity boats.  He also owed something over L800 to the regular tradesmen of the University, and a good deal more to other creditors who were not ‘regular.’  During the whole of this time his visits to Folking had been short and few.  The old squire had become more and more angry, and not the less so because he was sensible of a non-performance of duty on his own part.  Though he was close to