record that Clarence could discover was much abbreviated, and though
there was some allusion to intimidation, the decision seemed to have
been fixed by the non-existence of any entail.

Christmas was drawing on, and gathering together what was left of
us. Though Griffith had spent only one Christmas at home in nine
years, it was wonderful how few we seemed, even when Martyn
returned. My father liked to have us about him, and even spoke of
Clarence's giving up his post as manager at Bristol, and living
entirely at home to attend to the estate; but my mother did not
encourage the idea. She could not quite bear to accept any one in
Griff's place, and rightly thought there was not occupation enough
to justify bringing Clarence home. I was competent to assist my
father through all the landlord's business that came to him within
doors, and Emily had ridden and walked about enough with him to be
an efficient inspector of crops and repairs, besides that Clarence
himself was within reach.

'Indeed,' he said to me, 'I cannot loose my hold on Frith and
Castleford till I see my way into the future.'

I did not know what he intended either then or when he gave his
voice against dismembering the property by selling the Wattlesea
estate, but arranged for raising Selina's income otherwise,
persuading my father to let him undertake the building of the
required cottages out of his own resources, on principles much more
wholesome than were likely to be employed by the speculator. Nor
did grasp what was in his mind when he made me look out my 'ghost
journal,' as we called my record of each apparition reported in the
mullion chamber or the lawn, with marks to those about which we had