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 regarded him with strong antipathy, who hated the way he held his head and disliked the fashion of his canes. But he rarely put himself out for the sake of conciliating them. His own path had not been so smooth that he should feel the necessity of strewing rose-leaves under the feet of his fellow-creatures. There was, perhaps, more tenderness in his nature than he would have been willing to acknowledge, but it was not often called out.

While yet a very young man, he had loved and married Isabel Allen, a woman peculiarly suited to him. There had been no disillusionment during the three happy years that followed—hardworking years, dearer to him than the hope of heaven. When a malignant disease robbed him, at one stroke, of his wife and boy, he felt that he had had his day, and he doggedly set himself to do his duty in an arid path. Though an unpopular man he soon earned the title of "public-spirited citizen." People learned that while an appeal to his feelings was not apt to be successful, an appeal to his reason, and to his sense of justice was rarely made in vain. It was the latter appeal that he yielded to when he thought he had discovered that Edna Brown had fallen in love with him. It happened about five years after the death of his wife. He did not particularly admire Edna Brown, though he was aware that most men did, and he would greatly have preferred to lead his own life, unhampered by new