We used to practise for an hour every afternoon, and the fascination of the sport gained upon Harold so much that he sent for a bow and arrows, and shot with us whenever he was not too busy, as, between the agency and the potteries, he often was.  He did not join the club, nor come to the weekly meetings at Northchester with Eustace and me, until, after having seen a little of the shooting there, I privately hinted to him that there was not the smallest chance of the champion belt changing hands unless he took up the family cause.  Whereupon, rather than that Eustace should be disappointed, he did ask to be admitted, and came once with us to the meeting, when, to tell the truth, he did not shoot as well as usual, for—­as afterwards appeared—­in riding into Northchester he had stopped to help to lift up a great tree that was insecure on its timber waggon, and even his hands shook a little from the exertion.  Besides, Eustace had discovered that Harold’s new bow shot better than his, and had insisted on changing, and Harold had not so proved the powers of Eustace’s as to cure it of its inferiority.

Eustace really came to shooting so tolerably as to make him look on the sport with complacency, and like the people he met there.  All this hardly seems worth telling, but events we little thought of sprang from those archery practices.  For the present we found them a great means of getting acquainted with the neighbours.  I bowed now to many more people than ever I had done before, and we had come into great favour since the Hydriots had astonished the county by announcing a dividend.  It was only three per cent., but that was an immense advance upon nothing, and the promise of the future was great; the shares had gone up nearly to their original value in the most sanguine days; and the workmen—­between prosperity, good management, the lecture-room at the “Dragon’s Head,” and the work among them done by the clerical, as well as the secular, Yolland—­ were, not models by any means, but far from the disorderly set they had been.  They did take some pride in decent houses and well-dressed children, and Harold’s plans for the improvement of their condition were accepted as they never would have been from one whose kindly sympathy and strength of will did not take them, as it were, captive.  “Among those workmen you feel that he is a born king of men,” said Ben Yolland.

And as Bullock had been bailiff as well as agent, Harry had all the home-farming matters on his hands, and attended to them like any farmer, so that it was no wonder that he gave little time to the meetings for archery practice, which involved the five miles expedition, and even to our own domestic practice, answering carelessly, when Eustace scolded him about letting a chance go by, and his heedlessness of the honour of the family, “Oh, I take a shot or two every morning as I go out, to keep my hand in.”

“You’ll get your arrows spoilt in the dew,” said Eustace.