THE GOOD OLD DAYS For the next month, or, to be accurate, the next five weeks, everything went merrily at Monk's Abbey.

It was as though some cloud had been lifted off the place and those who dwelt therein.

No longer did the Colonel look solemn when he came down in the morning, and no longer was he cross after he had read his letters.

Now his interviews with the steward in the study were neither prolonged nor anxious; indeed, that functionary emerged thence on Saturday mornings with a shining countenance, drying the necessary cheque, heretofore so difficult to extract, by waving it ostentatiously in the air.

Lastly, the Colonel did not seem to be called upon to make such frequent visits to his man of business, and to tarry at the office of the bank manager in Northwold.
Once there was a meeting, but, contrary to the general custom, the lawyer and the banker came to see him in company, and stopped to luncheon.