Mr.Belcher knew how to play his cards, and having set the people talking, he filled out and sent to each of the wives of the five pastors of the village, as a gift, a certificate of five shares of the stock of the Continental Petroleum Company.

Of course, they were greatly delighted, and, of course, twenty-four hours had not passed by when every man, woman and child in Sevenoaks was acquainted with the transaction.

People began to revise their judgments of the man whom they had so severely condemned.

After all, it was the way in which he had done things in former days, and though they had come to a vivid apprehension of the fact that he had done them for a purpose, which invariably terminated in himself, they could not see what there was to be gained by so munificent a gift.

Was he not endeavoring, by self-sacrifice, to win back a portion of the consideration he had formerly enjoyed?
Was it not a confession of wrong-doing, or wrong judgment?
There were men who shook their heads, and "didn't know about it;" but the preponderance of feeling was on the side of the proprietor, who sat in his library and imagined just what was in progress around him,--nay, calculated upon it, as a chemist calculates the results of certain combinations in his laboratory.