If I wished to define Tom Thurnall by one epithet, I should call him specially an ungodly man--were it not that scriptural epithets have, now-a-days, such altogether conventional and official meanings, that one fears to convey, in using them, some notion quite foreign to the truth.

Tom was certainly not one of those ungodly whom David had to deal with of old, who robbed the widow, and put the fatherless to death.

His morality was as high as that of the average; his sense of honour far higher.

He was generous and kind-hearted.

No one ever heard him tell a lie; and he had a blunt honesty about him, half real, because he liked to be honest, and yet half affected too, because he found it pay in the long run, and because it threw off their guard the people whom he intended to make his tools.