Bill Donnington heard one of the village women behind him say: "There now! Did you ever see the like?
She was the sort they burnt in the old days, and I don't wonder, either." After this exciting performance the appearance of "the squire," as some of the village people were already beginning to call him, did not produce, perhaps, quite the sensation it might have done had he been the first instead of the second item on the programme.

But as he stood there, a fine figure of a man, his keen, good-looking face lit up with a very agreeable expression of kindliness and of good-will, a wave of appreciation seemed to surge towards him from the body of the hall.
Poor Milly's father had been the sort of landowner--to the honour of England be it said the species has ever been comparatively rare--who regarded his tenants as of less interest than the livestock on his home farm.

What he had done for them he had done grudgingly; but it was even now clear to them all that in the new squire they had a very different kind of gentleman.
Varick was moved and touched--far more so than any of those present realized.

The scene before him--this humble little school-room, and the simple people standing there--meant to him the fulfilment of a life-long dream.

And that was not all.