"It can't be--it mustn't be," exclaimed his father angrily; "it's perfectly preposterous.  We shall be the talk and the jest of the whole county.  It will do harm, too, to the working-classes.  Why, you'll have all the idle vagabonds there.  Some light-fingered and light-heeled poacher will win your sovereign--you'll be the laughing-stock of all the country round, and so shall I too.  And such a thing, instead of encouraging patient industry and sobriety, will be just the means of giving heart to the idlers and the profligates.  It must not be, Walter, my boy."