And as to Mr.Gordon, that gentleman having gone to law on the great timber question, and having been signally beaten thereon, had informed Sir Peter that he disowned him as a cousin and despised him as a man; not exactly in those words,--more covertly, and therefore more stingingly.

But Sir Peter invited Mr.Mivers for a week's shooting, and requested the Reverend John to meet him.
Mr.Mivers arrived.

The sixteen years that had elapsed since he was first introduced to the reader had made no perceptible change in his appearance.

It was one of his maxims that in youth a man of the world should appear older than he is; and in middle age, and thence to his dying day, younger.

And he announced one secret for attaining that art in these words: "Begin your wig early, thus you never become gray." Unlike most philosophers, Mivers made his practice conform to his precepts; and while in the prime of youth inaugurated a wig in a fashion that defied the flight of time, not curly and hyacinthine, but straight-haired and unassuming.