Old Kit Dale, who had married money, had bought outlying farms,--a bit of ground here and a bit there,--talking, as he did so, much of political influence and of the good old Tory cause.

But these farms and bits of ground had gone again before our time.

To them had been attached no religion.

When old Kit had found himself pressed in that matter of the majority of the Nineteenth Dragoons, in which crack regiment his second son made for himself quite a career, he found it easier to sell than to save--seeing that that which he sold was his own and not the patrimony of the Dales.

At his death the remainder of these purchases had gone.