The law of averages is a stringent one, and it may be assumed with reasonable certainty, that when one ancient and respectable family-coach runs down hill, another vehicle, probably of more modern equipment, will go up.  In the case under consideration, the operations of this principle were less obscure than is sometimes the way with them.  As Mount Music descended, so did No. 6, The Mall, Cluhir, rise, and Dr. Mangan’s growing prosperity compensated Fate for the decline in Major Talbot-Lowry’s affairs, with a precision that, to a person interested in the statistics of averages, might have seemed beautiful.  The Big Doctor was now the leading man in Cluhir, leader in its councils and its politics.  On his professional side, his advice and ministrations were in demand even beyond the range of his motor car, and the measure of his greatness may be best estimated when it is mentioned that his motor had been the first to startle the streets of his native town.

Major Talbot-Lowry was of the Old Guard, who, in those now far away times, swore never to surrender to what he held to be so thoroughly unsportsmanlike an innovation as a motor car, and the Doctor was accustomed to offer facetious apologies when he and his car drew up at the Mount Music hall door.  This had become a fairly frequent occurrence.  Dick was not the man he had been.  When his hounds went, old age came, and it came like an illness, bewilderingly, unexpectedly.  Dick’s long, straight legs began to give at the knees, and his square shoulders learned the hollow curve of the back of his armchair, and submitted to it.  His long sight, that had outlived the infliction of spectacles for reading, was failing him; he had twice tally-ho’d away a yellow cur-dog, at less than a field’s distance.

“No, Mangan, I’ll be damned if I go out to make a fool of myself and the hounds!” he said, when reproached by the Doctor for staying at home.  “The sooner I’m put down like an old hound, the better!”

Dr. Mangan had been equal to the occasion, and had assured Dick that Bill Kirby was “lost altogether” for want of his counsels, and that the whole field were saying the Major was the only man to show sport, and that he knew the way a fox’d run, as well as if he was inside him!

“In company with another old gander, I suppose!” says poor Dick, with tears in his eyes, being both moved and cheered by his own jest.

The Doctor’s presence was partly a reassurance and partly a menace, to Major Dick.  There had been, from time to time, further opportunities for the investment of the Doctor’s “spare ha’pence” in “something solid and safe, like land.”  Aunt Bessie Cantwell’s money, for instance, had, on her demise, all come Dr. Mangan’s way.  There was no need for the Major to think there was any obligation, he might call it a mutual advantage, if he liked, anyhow, why shouldn’t the money go where it was wanted?  The security was all right.

“Oh yes,” says Dick, “that’s right enough, and whenever I can come to terms with the tenants—­”