The lifelong operation of rigorous habit had sunk him into a groove as
deep as the canon of some American river. His ideas on every subject
were eternally and immutably fixed, and, without being altogether aware
of it, he was part of the solid foundation of England's greatness. In
1892, when the whole of the Five Towns was agitated by the great probate
case of Wilbraham _v._ Wilbraham, in which Mr. Ford acted for the
defendants, Beechinor, then aged forty-eight, was torn from his stool
and sent out to Rio de Janeiro as part of a commission to take the
evidence of an important witness who had declined all offers to come
home.

The old clerk was full of pride and self-importance at being thus
selected, but secretly he shrank from the journey, the mere idea of
which filled him with vague apprehension and alarm. His nature had lost
all its adaptability; he trembled like a young girl at the prospect of
new experiences. On the return voyage the vessel was quarantined at
Liverpool for a fortnight, and Beechinor had an attack of low fever.
Eight months afterwards he was ill again. Beechinor went to bed for the
last time, cursing Providence, Wilbraham _v._ Wilbraham, and Rio.

Mark Beechinor was thirty, just nineteen years younger than his brother.
Tall, uncouth, big-boned, he had a rather ferocious and forbidding
aspect; yet all women seemed to like him, despite the fact that he
seldom could open his mouth to them. There must have been something in
his wild and liquid dark eyes which mutely appealed for their protective
sympathy, something about him of shy and wistful romance that atoned for
the huge awkwardness of this taciturn elephant. Mark was at present the
manager of a small china manufactory at Longshaw, the farthest of the
Five Towns in Staffordshire, and five miles from Bursley. He was an
exceptionally clever potter, but he never made money. He had the dreamy