CHAPTER XIII.
MR. FFRENCH VISITS THE WORKS.
There were few men in Broxton or the country surrounding it who were better known than Gerard Ffrench. In the first place, he belonged, as it were, to Broxton, and his family for several generations back had belonged to it. His great-grandfather had come to the place a rich man and had built a huge house outside the village, and as the village had become a town the Ffrenchs had held their heads high. They had confined themselves to Broxton until Gerard Ffrench took his place. They had spent their lives there and their money. Those who lived to remember the youth and manhood of the present Ffrench's father had, like Granny Dixon, their stories to tell. His son, however, was a man of a different mold. There were no evil stories of him. He was a well-bred and agreeable person and lived a refined life. But he was a man with tastes which scarcely belonged to his degree.
"I ought to have been born in the lower classes and have had my way to make," he had been heard to say.
Unfortunately, however, he had been born a gentleman of leisure and educated as one. But this did not prevent him from indulging in his proclivities. He had made more than one wild business venture which had electrified his neighbors. Once he had been on the verge of a great success and again he had overstepped the verge of a
