This one fact remains good in Sevenoaks, and the world over.  The man who holds the financial power and the social throne of a town, makes that town, in a good degree, what he is.  If he is virtuous, noble, unselfish, good, the elements beneath him shape themselves, consciously or unconsciously, to his character.  Vice shrinks into disgrace, or flies to more congenial haunts.  The greed for gold which grasps and over-reaches, becomes ashamed, or changes to neighborly helpfulness.  The discontent that springs up in the shadow of an unprincipled and boastful worldly success, dies; and men become happy in the toil that wins a comfortable shelter and daily bread, when he to whom all look up, looks down upon them with friendly and sympathetic eyes, and holds his wealth and power in service of their good.

Paul Benedict is now the proprietor of Sevenoaks; and from the happy day in which he, with his sister and child, came to the occupation of the mansion which his old persecutor had built for himself, the fortunes and character of the town have mended.  Even the poor-house has grown more comfortable in its apartments and administration, while year by year its population has decreased.  Through these first years, the quiet man has moved around his mill and his garden, his mind teeming with suggestions, and filling with new interest in their work the dull brains that had been worn deep and dry with routine.  All eyes turn upon him with affection.  He is their brother as well as their master.

In the great house, there is a happy woman.  She has found something to love and something to do.  These were all she needed to make her supremely self-respectful, happy, and, in the best degree, womanly.  Willful, ambitious, sacrificing her young affections to gold at the first, and wasting years in idleness and unworthy intrigue, for the lack of affection and the absence of motive to usefulness and industry, she has found, at last, the secret of her woman’s life, and has accepted it with genuine gratitude.  In ministering to her brother and her brother’s child, now a stalwart lad, in watching with untiring eyes and helping with ready wit the unused proprietor in his new circumstances, and in assisting the poor around her, she finds her days full of toil and significance, and her nights brief with grateful sleep.  She is the great lady of the village, holding high consideration from her relationship to the proprietor, and bestowing importance upon him by her revelation of his origin and his city associations.

The special summer evening to which we allude is one which has long been looked forward to by all the people in whom our story has made the reader sympathetically interested.  It is an anniversary—­the fifth since the new family took up their residence in the grand house.  Mr. and Mrs. Balfour with their boy are there.  Sam Yates is there—­now the agent of the mill—­a trusty, prosperous man; and by a process of which we have had no opportunity