BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON.

CHAPTER X.

In my next chapter I shall present Squire Hazeldean in patriarchal state—not exactly under the fig-tree he has planted, but before the stocks he has reconstructed.—Squire Hazeldean and his family on the village green! The canvass is all ready for the colours.

But in this chapter I must so far afford a glimpse into antecedents as to let the reader know that there is one member of the family whom he is not likely to meet at present, if ever, on the village green at Hazeldean.

Our squire lost his father two years after his birth; his mother was very handsome—and so was her jointure; she married again at the expiration of her year of mourning—the object of her second choice was Colonel Egerton.

In every generation of Englishmen (at least since the lively reign of Charles II.) there are a few whom some elegant Genius skims off from the milk of human nature, and reserves for the cream of society. Colonel Egerton was one of these terque, quaterque beati, and dwelt apart on a top shelf in that delicate porcelain dish—not bestowed upon vulgar buttermilk—which persons of fashion call The Great World. Mighty was the marvel of Pall Mall, and profound was the pity of Park Lane, when this supereminent personage condescended to lower himself into a husband. But Colonel Egerton was not a mere gaudy butterfly; he had the provident instincts ascribed to the bee. Youth had passed from him—and carried off much solid property in its flight; he saw that a time was fast coming when a home, with a partner who could help to maintain it, would be conducive to his comforts, and an occasional humdrum evening by the fireside beneficial to his health. In the midst of one season at Brighton, to which gay place he had accompanied the Prince of Wales, he saw a widow who, though in the weeds of mourning, did not appear inconsolable. Her person pleased his taste—the accounts of her jointure satisfied his understanding; he contrived an introduction, and brought a brief wooing to a happy close. The late Mr Hazeldean had so far anticipated the chance of the young widow's second espousals, that, in case of that event, he transferred, by his testamentary dispositions, the guardianship of his infant heir from the mother to two squires whom he had named his executors. This circumstance combined with her new ties somewhat to alienate Mrs Hazeldean from the pledge of her former loves; and when she had born a son to Colonel Egerton, it was upon that child that her maternal affections gradually concentrated.

William Hazeldean was sent by his guardians to a large provincial academy, at which his forefathers had received their education time out of mind. At first he spent his holidays with Mrs Egerton; but as she now resided either in London, or followed her lord to Brighton to partake of the gaieties at the Pavilion—so, as he grew older, William, who had a hearty affection for country life, and of whose bluff manners and rural breeding Mrs Egerton (having grown exceedingly refined) was openly ashamed, asked and obtained permission to spend his vacations either with his guardians or at the old hall. He went late to a small college at Cambridge, endowed in the fifteenth century by some ancestral Hazeldean; and left it, on coming of age, without taking a degree. A few years afterwards he married a young lady, country born and bred like himself.

Meanwhile his half-brother, Audley Egerton, may be said to have begun his initiation into the beau monde before he had well cast aside his coral and bells; he had been fondled in the lap of duchesses, and galloped across the room astride on the canes of ambassadors and princes. For Colonel Egerton was not only very highly connected—not only one of the Dii majoris of fashion—but he had the still rarer good fortune to be an exceedingly popular man with all who knew him;—so popular, that even the fine ladies whom he had adored and abandoned forgave him for marrying out of "the set," and continued to be as friendly as if he had not married at all. People who were commonly called heartless, were never weary of doing kind things to the Egertons.—When the time came for Audley to leave the preparatory school, at which his infancy budded forth amongst the stateliest of the little lilies of the field, and go to Eton, half the fifth and sixth forms had been canvassed to be exceedingly civil to young Egerton. The boy soon showed that he inherited his father's talent for acquiring popularity, and that to this talent he added those which put popularity to use. Without achieving any scholastic distinction, he yet contrived to establish at Eton the most desirable reputation which a boy can obtain—namely, that among his own contemporaries—the reputation of a boy who was sure to do something when he grew to be a man. As a gentleman commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, he continued to sustain this high expectation, though he won no prizes and took but an ordinary degree; and at Oxford the future "something" became more defined—it was "something in public life" that this young man was to do.

While he was yet at the university, both his parents died—within a few months of each other. And when Audley Egerton came of age, he succeeded to a paternal property which was supposed to be large, and indeed had once been so, but Colonel Egerton had been too lavish a man to enrich his heir, and about £1500 a-year was all that sales and mortgages left of an estate that had formerly approached a rental of ten thousand pounds.

Still, Audley was considered to be opulent, and he did not dispel that favourable notion by any imprudent exhibition of parsimony. On entering the world of London, the Clubs flew open to receive him: and he woke one morning to find himself, not indeed famous—but the fashion. To this fashion he at once gave a certain gravity and value—he associated as much as possible with public men and political ladies—he succeeded in confirming the notion that he was 'born to ruin or to rule the State.'

Now, his dearest and most intimate friend was Lord L'Estrange, from whom he had been inseparable at Eton; and who now, if Audley Egerton was the fashion, was absolutely the rage in London.

Harley Lord L'Estrange was the only son of the Earl of Lansmere, a nobleman of considerable wealth, and allied by intermarriages to the loftiest and most powerful families in England. Lord Lansmere, nevertheless, was but little known in the circles of London. He lived chiefly on his estates, occupying himself with the various duties of a great proprietor, and rarely came to the metropolis; so that he could afford to give his son a very ample allowance, when Harley, at the age of sixteen, (having already attained to the sixth form at Eton,) left school for one of the regiments of the Guards.

Few knew what to make of Harley L'Estrange—and that was, perhaps, the reason why he was so much thought of. He had been by far the most brilliant boy of his time at Eton—not only the boast of the cricket-ground, but the marvel of the school-room—yet so full of whims and oddities, and seeming to achieve his triumphs with so little aid from steadfast application, that he had not left behind him the same expectations of solid eminence which his friend and senior, Audley Egerton, had excited. His eccentricities—his quaint sayings and out-of-the-way actions, became as notable in the great world as they had been in the small one of a public school. That he was very clever there was no doubt, and that the cleverness was of a high order might be surmised not only from the originality but the independence of his character. He dazzled the world, without seeming to care for its praise or its censure—dazzled it, as it were, because he could not help shining. He had some strange notions, whether political or social, which rather frightened his father. According to Southey, "A man should be no more ashamed of having been a republican than of having been young." Youth and extravagant opinions naturally go together. I don't know whether Harley L'Estrange was a republican at the age of eighteen; but there was no young man in London who seemed to care less for being heir to an illustrious name and some forty or fifty thousand pounds a-year. It was a vulgar fashion in that day to play the exclusive, and cut persons who wore bad neckcloths and called themselves Smith or Johnson. Lord L'Estrange never cut any one, and it was quite enough to slight some worthy man because of his neckcloth or his birth, to ensure to the offender the pointed civilities of this eccentric successor to the Dorimonts and the Wildairs.

It was the wish of his father that Harley, as soon as he came of age, should represent the borough of Lansmere, (which said borough was the single plague of the Earl's life.) But this wish was never realised. Suddenly, when the young idol of London still wanted some two or three years of his majority, a new whim appeared to seize him. He withdrew entirely from society—he left unanswered the most pressing three-cornered notes of inquiry and invitation that ever strewed the table of a young Guardsman; he was rarely seen anywhere in his former haunts—when seen, was either alone or with Egerton; and his gay spirits seemed wholly to have left him. A profound melancholy was written in his countenance, and breathed in the listless tones of his voice. At this time the Guards were achieving in the Peninsula their imperishable renown; but the battalion to which Harley belonged was detained at home; and whether chafed by inaction or emulous of glory, the young Lord suddenly exchanged into a cavalry regiment, from which a recent memorable conflict had swept one half the officers. Just before he joined, a vacancy happening to occur for the representation of Lansmere, he made it his special request to his father that the family interest might be given to his friend Egerton—went down to the Park, which adjoined the borough, to take leave of his parents—and Egerton followed, to be introduced to the electors. This visit made a notable epoch in the history of many personages who figure in my narrative; but at present I content myself with saying, that circumstances arose which, just as the canvass for the new election commenced, caused both L'Estrange and Audley to absent themselves from the scene of action, and that the last even wrote to Lord Lansmere expressing his intention of declining to contest the borough.

Fortunately for the parliamentary career of Audley Egerton, the election had become to Lord Lansmere not only a matter of public importance, but of personal feeling. He resolved that the battle should be fought out, even in the absence of the candidate, and at his own expense. Hitherto the contest for this distinguished borough had been, to use the language of Lord Lansmere, "conducted in the spirit of gentlemen,"—that is to say, the only opponents to the Lansmere interest had been found in one or the other of two rival families in the same county; and as the Earl was a hospitable courteous man, much respected and liked by the neighbouring gentry, so the hostile candidate had always interlarded his speeches with profuse compliments to his Lordship's high character, and civil expressions as to his Lordship's candidate. But, thanks to successive elections, one of these two families had come to an end, and its actual representative was now residing within the Rules of the Bench; the head of the other family was the sitting member, and, by an amicable agreement with the Lansmere interest, he remained as neutral as it is in the power of any sitting member to be amidst the passions of an intractable committee. Accordingly, it had been hoped that Egerton would come in without opposition, when, the very day on which he had abruptly left the place, a handbill, signed "Haverill Dashmore, Captain R.N., Baker Street, Portman Square," announced, in very spirited language, the intention of that gentleman to emancipate the borough from the unconstitutional domination of an oligarchical faction, not with a view to his own political aggrandisement—indeed, at great personal inconvenience—but actuated solely by abhorrence to tyranny, and patriotic passion for the purity of election.

This announcement was followed, within two hours, by the arrival of Captain Dashmore himself, in a carriage-and-four covered with yellow favours, and filled, inside and out, with harum-scarum looking friends who had come down with him to aid the canvass and share the fun.

Captain Dashmore was a thorough sailor, who had, however, taken a disgust to the profession from the date in which a Minister's nephew had been appointed to the command of a ship to which the Captain considered himself unquestionably entitled. It is just to the Minister to add, that Captain Dashmore had shown as little regard for orders from a distance, as had immortalized Nelson himself; but then the disobedience had not achieved the same redeeming success as that of Nelson, and Captain Dashmore ought to have thought himself fortunate in escaping a severer treatment than the loss of promotion. But no man knows when he is well off; and retiring on half-pay, just as he came into unexpected possession of some forty or fifty thousand pounds, bequeathed by a distant relation, Captain Dashmore was seized with a vindictive desire to enter parliament, and inflict oratorical chastisement on the Administration.

A very few hours sufficed to show the sea-captain to be a most capital electioneerer for a small and not very enlightened borough. It is true that he talked the saddest nonsense ever heard from an open window; but then his jokes were so broad, his manner so hearty, his voice so big, that in those dark days, before the schoolmaster was abroad, he would have beaten your philosophical Radical and moralising Democrat hollow. Moreover he kissed all the women, old and young, with all the zest of a sailor who has known what it is to be three years at sea without sight of a beardless lip; he threw open all the public-houses, asked a numerous committee every day to dinner, and, chucking his purse up in the air, declared "he would stick to his guns while there was a shot in the locker." Till then, there had been but little political difference between the candidate supported by Lord Lansmere's interest and the opposing parties—for country gentlemen, in those days, were pretty much of the same way of thinking, and the question had been really local—viz., whether the Lansmere interest should or should not prevail over that of the two squirearchical families who had alone, hitherto, ventured to oppose it. But though Captain Dashmore was really a very loyal man, and much too old a sailor to think that the State (which, according to established metaphor, is a vessel, par excellence,) should admit Jack upon quarterdeck, yet, what with talking against lords and aristocracy, jobs and abuses, and searching through no very refined vocabulary for the strongest epithets to apply to those irritating nouns-substantive, his bile had got the better of his understanding, and he became fuddled, as it were, by his own eloquence. Thus, though as innocent of Jacobinical designs as he was incapable of setting the Thames on fire, you would have guessed him, by his speeches, to be one of the most determined incendiaries that ever applied a match to the combustible materials of a contested election; while, being by no means accustomed to respect his adversaries, he could not have treated the Earl of Lansmere with less ceremony if his Lordship had been a Frenchman. He usually designated that respectable nobleman by the title of "Old Pompous;" and the Mayor, who was never seen abroad but in top-boots, and the Solicitor, who was of a large build, received from his irreverent wit the joint soubriquet of "Tops and Bottoms!" Hence the election had now become, as I said before, a personal matter with my Lord, and, indeed, with the great heads of the Lansmere interest. The Earl seemed to consider his very coronet at stake in the question. "The man from Baker Street," with his preternatural audacity, appeared to him a being ominous and awful—not so much to be regarded with resentment, as with superstitious terror: he felt as felt the dignified Montezuma, when that ruffianly Cortez, with his handful of Spanish rapscallions, bearded him in his own capital, and in the midst of his Mexican splendour.—"The gods were menaced if man could be so insolent!" wherefore said my Lord, tremulously,—"The Constitution is gone if the Man from Baker Street comes in for Lansmere!"

But, in the absence of Audley Egerton, the election looked extremely ugly, and Captain Dashmore gained ground hourly, when the Lansmere Solicitor happily bethought him of a notable proxy for the missing candidate. The Squire of Hazeldean, with his young wife, had been invited by the Earl in honour of Audley; and in the Squire the Solicitor beheld the only mortal who could cope with the sea-captain,—a man with a voice as burly, and a face as bold—a man who, if permitted for the nonce by Mrs Hazeldean, would kiss all the women no less heartily than the Captain kissed them; and who was, moreover, a taller, and a handsomer, and a younger man—all three, great recommendations in the kissing department of a contested election. Yes, to canvass the borough, and to speak from the window, Squire Hazeldean would be even more popularly presentable than the London-bred and accomplished Audley Egerton himself.

The Squire, applied to and urged on all sides, at first said bluntly, "that he would do anything in reason to serve his brother, but that he did not like, for his own part, appearing, even in proxy, as a Lord's nominee; and moreover, if he was to be sponsor for his brother, why, he must promise and vow, in his name, to be staunch and true to the land they lived by; and how could he tell that Audley, when once he got into the House, would not forget the land, and then he, William Hazeldean, would be made a liar, and look like a turncoat!"

But these scruples being overruled by the arguments of the gentlemen and the entreaties of the ladies, who took in the election that intense interest which those gentle creatures usually do take in all matters of strife and contest, the Squire at length consented to confront the Man from Baker Street, and went accordingly into the thing with that good heart and old English spirit with which he went into everything whereon he had once made up his mind.

The expectations formed of the Squire's capacities for popular electioneering were fully realised. He talked quite as much nonsense as Captain Dashmore on every subject except the landed interest;—there he was great, for he knew the subject well—knew it by the instinct that comes with practice, and compared to which all your showy theories are mere cobwebs and moonshine.

The agricultural outvoters—many of whom, not living under Lord Lansmere, but being small yeomen, had hitherto prided themselves on their independence, and gone against my Lord—could not in their hearts go against one who was every inch the farmer's friend. They began to share in the Earl's personal interest against the Man from Baker Street; and big fellows, with legs bigger round than Captain Dashmore's tight little body, and huge whips in their hands, were soon seen entering the shops, "intimidating the electors," as Captain Dashmore indignantly declared.

These new recruits made a great difference in the muster-roll of the Lansmere books; and when the day for polling arrived, the result was a fair question for even betting. At the last hour, after a neck-and-neck contest, Mr Audley Egerton beat the Captain by two votes. And the names of these voters were John Avenel, resident freeman, and his son-in-law, Mark Fairfield, an outvoter, who, though a Lansmere freeman, had settled in Hazeldean, where he had obtained the situation of head carpenter on the Squire's estate.

These votes were unexpected; for, though Mark Fairfield had come to Lansmere on purpose to support the Squire's brother, and though the Avenels had been always staunch supporters of the Lansmere Blue interest, yet a severe affliction (as to the nature of which, not desiring to sadden the opening of my story, I am considerately silent) had befallen both these persons, and they had left the town on the very day after Lord L'Estrange and Mr Egerton had quitted Lansmere Park.

Whatever might have been the gratification of the Squire, as a canvasser and a brother, at Mr Egerton's triumph, it was much damped when, on leaving the dinner given in honour of the victory at the Lansmere Arms, and about, with no steady step, to enter the carriage which was to convey him to his Lordship's house, a letter was put into his hands by one of the gentlemen who had accompanied the Captain to the scene of action; and the perusal of that letter, and a few whispered words from the bearer thereof, sent the Squire back to Mrs Hazeldean a much soberer man than she had ventured to hope for. The fact was, that on the day of nomination, the Captain having honoured Mr Hazeldean with many poetical and figurative appellations—such as "Prize Ox," "Tony Lumpkin," "Blood-sucking Vampire," and "Brotherly Warming-Pan," the Squire had retorted by a joke about "Salt Water Jack;" and the Captain, who, like all satirists, was extremely susceptible and thin-skinned, could not consent to be called "Salt Water Jack" by a "Prize Ox" and a "Blood-sucking Vampire." The letter, therefore, now conveyed to Mr Hazeldean by a gentleman, who, being from the Sister Country, was deemed the most fitting accomplice in the honourable destruction of a brother mortal, contained nothing more nor less than an invitation to single combat; and the bearer thereof, with the suave politeness enjoined by etiquette on such well-bred homicidal occasions, suggested the expediency of appointing the place of meeting in the neighbourhood of London, in order to prevent interference from the suspicious authorities of Lansmere.

The natives of some countries—the French in particular—think little of that formal operation which goes by the name of Duelling. Indeed, they seem rather to like it than otherwise. But there is nothing your thorough-paced Englishman—a Hazeldean of Hazeldean—considers with more repugnance and aversion, than that same cold-blooded ceremonial. It is not within the range of an Englishman's ordinary habits of thinking. He prefers going to law—a much more destructive proceeding of the two. Nevertheless, if an Englishman must fight, why, he will fight. He says "it is very foolish;" he is sure "it is most unchristianlike;" he agrees with all that Philosopher, Preacher, and Press have laid down on the subject; but he makes his will, says his prayers, and goes out, like a heathen!

It never, therefore, occurred to the Squire to show the white feather upon this unpleasant occasion. The next day, feigning excuse to attend the sale of a hunting stud at Tattersall's, he ruefully went up to London, after taking a peculiarly affectionate leave of his wife. Indeed, the Squire felt convinced that he should never return home except in a coffin. "It stands to reason," said he to himself, "that a man who has been actually paid by the King's Government for shooting people ever since he was a little boy in a midshipman's jacket, must be a dead hand at the job. I should not mind if it was with double-barrelled Mantons and small shot; but, ball and pistol! they arn't human nor sportsmanlike!" However, the Squire, after settling his worldly affairs, and hunting up an old College friend who undertook to be his second, proceeded to a sequestered corner of Wimbledon Common, and planted himself, not sideways, as one ought to do in such encounters, (the which posture the Squire swore was an unmanly way of shirking,) but full front to the mouth of his adversary's pistol, with such sturdy composure, that Captain Dashmore, who, though an excellent shot, was at bottom as good-natured a fellow as ever lived, testified his admiration by letting off his gallant opponent with ball in the fleshy part of the shoulder; after which he declared himself perfectly satisfied. The parties then shook hands, mutual apologies were exchanged, and the Squire, much to his astonishment to find himself still alive, was conveyed to Limmer's Hotel, where, after a considerable amount of anguish, the ball was extracted, and the wound healed. Now it was all over, the Squire felt very much raised in his own conceit; and, when he was in a humour more than ordinarily fierce, that perilous event became a favourite allusion with him.

He considered, moreover, that his brother had incurred at his hand the most lasting obligations; and that, having procured Audley's return to Parliament, and defended his interests at the risk of his own life, he had an absolute right to dictate to that gentleman how to vote—upon all matters at least connected with the landed interest. And when, not very long after Audley took his seat in Parliament, (which he did not do for some months,) he thought proper both to vote and to speak in a manner wholly belying the promises the Squire had made on his behalf, Mr Hazeldean wrote him such a trimmer, that it could not but produce an unconciliatory reply. Shortly afterwards, the Squire's exasperation reached the culminating point; for, having to pass through Lansmere on a market day, he was hooted by the very farmers whom he had induced to vote for his brother; and, justly imputing the disgrace to Audley, he never heard the name of that traitor to the land mentioned without a heightened colour and an indignant expletive. Monsieur de Roqueville—who was the greatest wit of his day—had, like the Squire, a half-brother, with whom he was not on the best of terms, and of whom he always spoke as his "frÈre de loin." Audley Egerton was thus Squire Hazeldean's "distant-brother!"—Enough of these explanatory antecedents,—let us return to the Stocks.

CHAPTER XI.

The Squire's carpenters were taken from the park pales, and set to work at the parish stocks. Then came the painter and coloured them a beautiful dark blue, with a white border—and a white rim round the holes—with an ornamental flourish in the middle. It was the gayest public edifice in the whole village—though the village possessed no less than three other monuments of the Vitruvian genius of the Hazeldeans:—to wit, the alms-house, the school, and the parish pump.

A more elegant, enticing, coquettish pair of stocks never gladdened the eye of a justice of the peace.

And Squire Hazeldean's eye was gladdened. In the pride of his heart he brought all the family down to look at the stocks. The Squire's family (omitting the frÈre de loin) consisted of Mrs Hazeldean, his wife; next, of Miss Jemima Hazeldean, his first cousin; thirdly, of Master Francis Hazeldean, his only son; and fourthly, of Captain Barnabas Higginbotham, a distant relation—who, indeed, strictly speaking, was not of the family, but only a visitor ten months in the year. Mrs Hazeldean was every inch the lady,—the lady of the parish. In her comely, florid, and somewhat sunburnt countenance, there was an equal expression of majesty and benevolence; she had a blue eye that invited liking, and an aquiline nose that commanded respect. Mrs Hazeldean had no affectation of fine airs—no wish to be greater and handsomer and cleverer than she was. She knew herself, and her station, and thanked heaven for it. There was about her speech and manner something of that shortness and bluntness which often characterises royalty; and if the lady of a parish is not a queen in her own circle, it is never the fault of the parish. Mrs Hazeldean dressed her part to perfection. She wore silks that seemed heirlooms—so thick were they, so substantial and imposing. And over these, when she was in her own domain, the whitest of aprons; while at her waist was seen no fiddle-faddle chatelaine, with breloques and trumpery, but a good honest gold watch to mark the time, and a long pair of scissors to cut off the dead leaves from her flowers, for she was a great horticulturist. When occasion needed, Mrs Hazeldean could, however, lay by her more sumptuous and imperial raiment for a stout riding-habit of blue Saxony, and canter by her husband's side to see the hounds throw off. Nay, on the days on which Mr Hazeldean drove his famous fast-trotting cob to the market town, it was rarely that you did not see his wife on the left side of the gig. She cared as little as her lord did for wind and weather, and, in the midst of some pelting shower, her pleasant face peeped over the collar and capes of a stout dreadnought, expanding into smiles and bloom as some frank rose, that opens from its petals, and rejoices in the dews. It was easy to see that the worthy couple had married for love; they were as little apart as they could help it. And still, on the First of September, if the house was not full of company which demanded her cares, Mrs Hazeldean "stepped out" over the stubbles by her husband's side, with as light a tread and as blithe an eye as when in the first bridal year she had enchanted the Squire by her genial sympathy with his sports.

So there now stands Harriet Hazeldean, one hand leaning on the Squire's broad shoulder, the other thrust into her apron, and trying her best to share her husband's enthusiasm for his own public-spirited patriotism, in the renovation of the parish stocks. A little behind, with two fingers leaning on the thin arm of Captain Barnabas, stood Miss Jemima, the orphan daughter of the Squire's uncle, by a runaway imprudent marriage with a young lady who belonged to a family which had been at war with the Hazeldeans since the reign of Charles I., respecting a right of way to a small wood (or rather spring) of about an acre, through a piece of furze land, which was let to a brickmaker at twelve shillings a-year. The wood belonged to the Hazeldeans, the furze land to the Sticktorights, (an old Saxon family if ever there was one.) Every twelfth year, when the faggots and timber were felled, this feud broke out afresh; for the Sticktorights refused to the Hazeldeans the right to cart off the said faggots and timber, through the only way by which a cart could possibly pass. It is just to the Hazeldeans to say that they had offered to buy the land at ten times its value. But the Sticktorights, with equal magnanimity, had declared that they would not "alienate the family property for the convenience of the best squire that ever stood upon shoe leather." Therefore, every twelfth year, there was always a great breach of the peace on the part of both Hazeldeans and Sticktorights, magistrates and deputy-lieutenants though they were. The question was fairly fought out by their respective dependants, and followed by various actions for assault and trespass. As the legal question of right was extremely obscure, it never had been properly decided; and, indeed, neither party wished it to be decided, each at heart having some doubt of the propriety of its own claim. A marriage between a younger son of the Hazeldeans, and a younger daughter of the Sticktorights, was viewed with equal indignation by both families; and the consequence had been that the runaway couple, unblessed and unforgiven, had scrambled through life as they could, upon the scanty pay of the husband, who was in a marching regiment, and the interest of £1000, which was the wife's fortune independent of her parents. They died and left an only daughter, upon whom the maternal £1000 had been settled, about the time that the Squire came of age and into possession of his estates. And though he inherited all the ancestral hostility towards the Sticktorights, it was not in his nature to be unkind to a poor orphan, who was, after all, the child of a Hazeldean. Therefore, he had educated and fostered Jemima with as much tenderness as if she had been his sister; put out her £1000 at nurse, and devoted, from the ready money which had accrued from the rents during his minority, as much as made her fortune (with her own accumulated at compound interest) no less than £4000, the ordinary marriage portion of the daughters of Hazeldean. On her coming of age, he transferred this sum to her absolute disposal, in order that she might feel herself independent, see a little more of the world than she could at Hazeldean, have candidates to choose from if she deigned to marry; or enough to live upon if she chose to remain single. Miss Jemima had somewhat availed herself of this liberty, by occasional visits to Cheltenham and other watering places. But her grateful affection to the Squire was such, that she could never bear to be long away from the Hall. And this was the more praise to her heart, inasmuch as she was far from taking kindly to the prospect of being an old maid. And there were so few bachelors in the neighbourhood of Hazeldean, that she could not but have that prospect before her eyes whenever she looked out of the Hall windows. Miss Jemima was indeed one of the most kindly and affectionate of beings feminine—and if she disliked the thought of single blessedness, it really was from those innocent and womanly instincts towards the tender charities of hearth and home, without which a lady, however otherwise estimable, is little better than a Minerva in bronze. But whether or not, despite her fortune and her face, which last, though not strictly handsome, was pleasing—and would have been positively pretty if she had laughed more often, (for when she laughed, there appeared three charming dimples, invisible when she was grave)—whether or not, I say, it was the fault of our insensibility or her own fastidiousness, Miss Jemima approached her thirtieth year, and was still Miss Jemima. Now, therefore, that beautifying laugh of hers was very rarely heard, and she had of late become confirmed in two opinions, not at all conducive to laughter. One was a conviction of the general and progressive wickedness of the male sex, and the other was a decided and lugubrious belief that the world was coming to an end. Miss Jemima was now accompanied by a small canine favourite, true Blenheim, with a snub nose. It was advanced in life and somewhat obese. It sate on its haunches, with its tongue out of its month, except when it snapped at the flies. There was a strong Platonic friendship between Miss Jemima and Captain Barnabas Higginbotham; for he too was unmarried, and he had the same ill opinion of your sex, my dear madam, that Miss Jemima had of ours. The Captain was a man of a slim and elegant figure;—the less said about the face the better, a truth of which the Captain himself was sensible, for it was a favourite maxim of his—"that in a man, everything is a slight, gentlemanlike figure." Captain Barnabas did not absolutely deny that the world was coming to an end, only he thought it would last his time.

Quite apart from all the rest, with the nonchalant survey of virgin dandyism, Francis Hazeldean looked over one of the high starched neckcloths which were then the fashion—a handsome lad, fresh from Eton for the summer holidays, but at that ambiguous age, when one disdains the sports of the boy, and has not yet arrived at the resources of the man.

"I should be glad, Frank," said the Squire, suddenly turning round to his son; "to see you take a little more interest in duties which, one day or other, you may be called upon to discharge. I can't bear to think that the property should fall into the hands of a fine gentleman, who will let things go to rack and ruin, instead of keeping them up as I do."

And the Squire pointed to the stocks.

Master Frank's eye followed the direction of the cane, as well as his cravat would permit; and he said, drily—

"Yes, sir; but how came the stocks to be so long out of repair?"

"Because one can't see to everything at once," retorted the Squire, tartly. "When a man has got eight thousand acres to look after, he must do a bit at a time."

"Yes," said Captain Barnabas. "I know that by experience."

"The deuce you do!" cried the Squire, bluntly. "Experience in eight thousand acres!"

"No—in my apartments in the Albany. No. 3 A. I have had them ten years, and it was only last Christmas that I bought my Japan cat."

"Dear me," said Miss Jemima; "a Japan cat! that must be very curious! What sort of a creature is it?"

"Don't you know? Bless me, a thing with three legs, and holds toast! I never thought of it, I assure you, till my friend Cosey said to me, one morning when he was breakfasting at my rooms—'Higginbotham, how is it that you, who like to have things comfortable about you, don't have a cat?' 'Upon my life,' said I, 'one can't think of everything at a time;' just like you, Squire."

"Pshaw," said Mr Hazeldean, gruffly—"not at all like me. And I'll thank you another time, Cousin Higginbotham, not to put me out, when I'm speaking on matters of importance; poking your cat into my stocks! They look something like now—don't they, Harry? I declare that the whole village seems more respectable. It is astonishing how much a little improvement adds to the—to the—"

"Charm of a landscape;" put in Miss Jemima sentimentally.

The Squire neither accepted nor rejected the suggested termination; but leaving his sentence uncompleted, broke suddenly off with

"And if I had listened to Parson Dale—"

"You would have done a very wise thing;" said a voice behind, as the Parson presented himself in the rear.

"Wise thing! Why surely, Mr Dale," said Mrs Hazeldean with spirit, for she always resented the least contradiction to her lord and master; perhaps as an interference with her own special right and prerogative! "why, surely if it is necessary to have stocks, it is necessary to repair them."

"That's right, go it, Harry!" cried the Squire, chuckling, and rubbing his hands as if he had been setting his terrier at the Parson: "St—St—at him! Well, Master Dale, what do you say to that?"

"My dear ma'am," said the Parson, replying in preference to the lady, "there are many institutions in the country which are very old, look very decayed, and don't seem of much use; but I would not pull them down for all that."

"You would reform them, then;" said Mrs Hazeldean, doubtfully, and with a look at her husband, as much as to say, "He is on politics now—that's your business."

"No, I would not, ma'am;" said the Parson stoutly.

"What on earth would you do, then?" quoth the Squire.

"Just let 'em alone," said the Parson. "Master Frank, there's a Latin maxim which was often in the mouth of Sir Robert Walpole, and which they ought to put into the Eton grammar—'Quieta non movere.' If things are quiet, let them be quiet! I would not destroy the stocks, because that might seem to the ill-disposed like a license to offend, and I would not repair the stocks, because that puts it into people's heads to get into them."

The Squire was a staunch politician of the old school, and he did not like to think that in repairing the stocks he had perhaps been conniving at revolutionary principles.

"This constant desire of innovation," said Miss Jemima, suddenly mounting the more funereal of her two favourite hobbies, "is one of the great symptoms of the approaching crash. We are altering, and mending, and reforming, when in twenty years at the utmost the world itself may be destroyed!" The fair speaker paused, and—

Captain Barnabas said, thoughtfully—"Twenty years!—the insurance offices rarely compute the best life at more than fourteen." He struck his hand on the stocks as he spoke, and added with his usual consolatory conclusion:—"The odds are, that it will last our time, Squire."

But whether Captain Barnabas meant the stocks or the world, he did not clearly explain, and no one took the trouble to inquire.

"Sir," said Master Frank, to his father, with that furtive spirit of quizzing, which he had acquired amongst other polite accomplishments at Eton.—"Sir, it is no use now considering whether the stocks should or should not have been repaired. The only question is, whom you will get to put into them."

"True," said the Squire, with much gravity.

"Yes, there it is!" said the Parson, mournfully. "If you would but learn 'non quieta movere!'"

"Don't spout your Latin at me, Parson!" cried the Squire, angrily; "I can give you as good as you bring any day.

"There," added the Squire, turning triumphantly towards his Harry, who looked with great admiration at this unprecedented burst of learning on the part of Mr Hazeldean—"There, two can play at that game! And now that we have all seen the stocks, we may as well go home, and drink tea. Will you come up and play a rubber, Dale? No!—hang it, man, I've not offended you—you know my ways."

"That I do, and they are among the things I would not have altered," cried the Parson—holding out his hand cheerfully. The Squire gave it a hearty shake, and Mrs Hazeldean hastened to do the same. "Do come; I am afraid we've been very rude; we are sad blunt folks. Do come; that's a dear good man; and of course poor Mrs Dale too." Mrs Hazeldean's favourite epithet for Mrs Dale was poor, and that for reasons to be explained hereafter.

"I fear my wife has got one of her bad headaches, but I will give her your kind message, and at all events you may depend upon me."

"That's right," cried the Squire, "in half-an-hour, eh?—How d'ye do, my little man?" as Lenny Fairfield, on his way home from some errand in the village, drew aside and pulled off his hat with both hands. "Stop—you see those stocks—eh? Tell all the bad little boys in the parish to take care how they get into them—a sad disgrace—you'll never be in such a quandary!"

"That at least I will answer for," said the Parson.

"And I too," added Mrs Hazeldean, patting the boy's curly head. "Tell your mother I shall come and have a good chat with her to-morrow evening."

And so the party passed on, and Lenny stood still on the road, staring hard at the stocks, which stared back at him from its four great eyes.

But Lenny did not remain long alone. As soon as the great folks had fairly disappeared, a large number of small folks emerged timorously from the neighbouring cottages, and approached the site of the stocks with much marvel, fear, and curiosity.

In fact, the renovated appearance of this monster—À propos de bottes, as one may say—had already excited considerable sensation among the population of Hazeldean. And even as when an unexpected owl makes his appearance in broad daylight, all the little birds rise from tree and hedgerow, and cluster round their ominous enemy, so now gathered all the much excited villagers round the intrusive and portentous Phenomenon.

"D'ye know what the diggins the Squire did it for, Gaffer Solomons?" asked one many-childed matron, with a baby in arms, an urchin of three years old clinging fast to her petticoat, and her hand maternally holding back a more adventurous hero of six, who had a great desire to thrust his head into one of the grisly apertures. All eyes turned to a sage old man, the oracle of the village, who, leaning both hands on his crutch, shook his head bodingly.

"Maw be," said Gaffer Solomons, "some of the boys ha' been robbing the orchards."

"Orchards"—cried a big lad who seemed to think himself personally appealed to—" why, the bud's scarce off the trees yet!"

"No more it in't!" said the dame with many children, and she breathed more freely.

"Maw be," said Gaffer Solomons, "some o' ye has been sitting snares."

"What for?" said a stout sullen-looking young fellow, whom conscience possibly pricked to reply. "What for, when it beant the season? And if a poor man did find a hear in his pocket i' the hay-time, I should like to know if ever a squire in the world would let un off wi' the stocks—eh?"

That last question seemed a settler, and the wisdom of Gaffer Solomons went down fifty per cent in the public opinion of Hazeldean.

"Maw be," said the Gaffer, this time with a thrilling effect, which restored his reputation—"Maw be some o' ye ha' been getting drunk, and making beestises o' yourselves!"

There was a dead pause, for this suggestion applied too generally to be met with a solitary response. At last one of the women said, with a meaning glance at her husband, "God bless the Squire; he'll make some on us happy women if that's all!"

There then arose an almost unanimous murmur of approbation among the female part of the audience; and the men looked at each other, and then at the Phenomenon, with a very hang-dog expression of countenance.

"Or, maw be," resumed Gaffer Solomons, encouraged to a fourth suggestion by the success of its predecessor—"Maw be some o' the Misseses ha' been making a rumpus, and scolding their goodmen. I heard say in my granfeythir's time, that arter old Mother Bang nigh died o' the ducking-stool, them 'ere stocks were first made for the women, out o' compassion like! And every one knows the Squire is a koind-hearted man, God bless un!"

"God bless un!" cried the men heartily; and they gathered lovingly round the Phenomenon, like heathens of old round a tutelary temple. But then rose one shrill clamour among the females, as they retreated with involuntary steps towards the verge of the green, whence they glared at Solomons and the Phenomenon with eyes so sparkling, and pointed at both with gestures so menacing, that Heaven only knows if a morsel of either would have remained much longer to offend the eyes of the justly enraged matronage of Hazeldean, if fortunately Master Stirn, the Squire's right-hand man, had not come up in the nick of time.

Master Stirn was a formidable personage—more formidable than the Squire himself—as, indeed, a squire's right-hand is generally more formidable than the head can pretend to be. He inspired the greater awe, because, like the stocks, of which he was deputed guardian, his powers were undefined and obscure, and he had no particular place in the out-of-door establishment. He was not the steward, yet he did much of what ought to be the steward's work; he was not the farm-bailiff, for the Squire called himself his own farm-bailiff, nevertheless, Mr Hazeldean sowed and ploughed, cropped and stocked, bought and sold, very much as Mr Stirn condescended to advise. He was not the park-keeper, for he neither shot the deer nor superintended the preserves; but it was he who always found out who had broken a park-pale or snared a rabbit. In short, what may be called all the harsher duties of a large landed proprietor devolved by custom and choice upon Mr Stirn. If a labourer was to be discharged, or a rent enforced, and the Squire knew that he should be talked over, and that the steward would be as soft as himself, Mr Stirn was sure to be the avenging a??e??? or messenger, to pronounce the words of fate; so that he appeared to the inhabitants of Hazeldean like the Poet's SÆva Necessitas, a vague incarnation of remorseless power, armed with whips, nails, and wedges. The very brute creation stood in awe of Mr Stirn. The calves knew that it was he who singled out which should be sold to the butcher, and huddled up into a corner with beating hearts at his grim footstep; the sow grunted, the duck quacked, the hen bristled her feathers and called to her chicks when Mr Stirn drew near. Nature had set her stamp upon him. Indeed, it may be questioned whether the great M. de Chambray himself, surnamed the Brave, had an aspect so awe-inspiring as that of Mr Stirn; albeit the face of that hero was so terrible, that a man who had been his lackey, seeing his portrait after he had been dead twenty years, fell a trembling all over like a leaf!

"And what the plague are you all doing here?" said Mr Stirn, as he waved and smacked a great cart-whip which he held in his hand, "making such a hullabaloo, you women, you! that I suspect the Squire will be sending out to know if the village is on fire. Go home, will ye? High time indeed to have the stocks ready, when you get squalling and conspiring under the very nose of a justice of the peace, just as the French Revolutioners did afore they cut off their King's head; my hair stands on end to look at ye." But already, before half this address was delivered, the crowd had dispersed in all directions—the women still keeping together, and the men sneaking off towards the ale-house. Such was the beneficent effect of the fatal stocks on the first day of their resuscitation!

However, in the break up of every crowd there must be always some one who gets off the last; and it so happened that our friend Lenny Fairfield, who had mechanically approached close to the stocks, the better to hear the oracular opinions of Gaffer Solomons, had no less mechanically, on the abrupt appearance of Mr Stirn, crept, as he hoped, out of sight, behind the trunk of the elm tree which partially shaded the stocks; and there now, as if fascinated, he still cowered, not daring to emerge in full view of Mr Stirn, and in immediate reach of the cart-whip,—when the quick eye of the right-hand man detected his retreat.

"Hallo, you sir—what the deuce, laying a mine to blow up the stocks! just like Guy Fox and the Gunpowder Plot, I declares! What ha' you got in your willanous little fist there?"

"Nothing, sir," said Lenny, opening his palm.

"Nothing—um!" said Mr Stirn much dissatisfied; and then, as he gazed more deliberately, recognising the pattern boy of the village, a cloud yet darker gathered over his brow; for Mr Stirn, who valued himself much on his learning—and who, indeed, by dint of more knowledge as well as more wit than his neighbours, had attained his present eminent station in life—was extremely anxious that his only son should also be a scholar; that wish,

Master Stirn was a notable dunce at the Parson's school, while Lenny Fairfield was the pride and boast of it; therefore Mr Stirn was naturally, and almost justifiably ill-disposed towards Lenny Fairfield, who had appropriated to himself the praises which Mr Stirn had designed for his son.

"Um!" said the right-hand man, glowering on Lenny malignantly, "you are the pattern boy of the village, are you? Very well, sir—then I put these here stocks under your care—and you'll keep off the other boys from sitting on 'em, and picking off the paint, and playing three holes and chuck farthing, as I declare they've been a-doing, just in front of the elewation. Now you knows your 'sponsibilities, little boy—and a great honour they are too, for the like o' you. If any damage be done, it is to you I shall look; d'ye understand? and that's what the Squire says to me. So you sees what it is to be a pattern boy, Master Lenny!"

With that Mr Stirn gave a loud crack of the cart-whip, by way of military honours, over the head of the vicegerent he had thus created, and strode off to pay a visit to two young unsuspecting pups, whose ears and tails he had graciously promised their proprietor to crop that evening. Nor, albeit few charges could be more obnoxious than that of deputy governor or chargÉ-d'affaires extraordinaire to the Parish Stocks, nor one more likely to render Lenny Fairfield odious to his contemporaries, ought he to have been insensible to the signal advantage of his condition over that of the two sufferers, against whose ears and tails Mr Stirn had no especial motives of resentment. To every bad there is a worse—and fortunately for little boys, and even for grown men, whom the Stirns of the world regard malignly, the majesty of law protects their ears, and the merciful forethought of nature deprived their remote ancestors of the privilege of entailing tails upon them. Had it been otherwise—considering what handles tails would have given to the oppressor, how many traps envy would have laid for them, how often they must have been scratched and mutilated by the briars of life, how many good excuses would have been found for lopping, docking, and trimming them—I fear that only the lap-dogs of fortune would have gone to the grave tail-whole.

CHAPTER XII.

The card-table was set out in the drawing-room at Hazeldean Hall; though the little party were still lingering in the deep recess of the large bay window—which (in itself of dimensions that would have swallowed up a moderate-sized London parlour) held the great round tea-table, with all appliances and means to boot—for the beautiful summer moon shed on the sward so silvery a lustre, and the trees cast so quiet a shadow, and the flowers and new-mown hay sent up so grateful a perfume, that, to close the windows, draw the curtains, and call for other lights than those of heaven, would have been an abuse of the prose of life which even Captain Barnabas, who regarded whist as the business of town and the holiday of the country, shrank from suggesting. Without, the scene, beheld by the clear moonlight, had the beauty peculiar to the garden ground round those old-fashioned country residences which, though a little modernised, still preserve their original character: the velvet lawn, studded with large plots of flowers, shaded and scented here to the left by lilacs, laburnums, and rich seringas—there, to the right, giving glimpses, over low-clipped yews, of a green bowling alley, with the white columns of a summerhouse built after the Dutch taste, in the reign of William III.; and in front—stealing away under covert of those still cedars, into the wilder landscape of the well-wooded undulating park. Within, viewed by the placid glimmer of the moon, the scene was no less characteristic of the abodes of that race which has no parallel in other lands, and which, alas, is somewhat losing its native idiosyncrasies in this—the stout country gentleman, not the fine gentleman of the country—the country gentleman somewhat softened and civilised from the mere sportsman or farmer, but still plain and homely, relinquishing the old hall for the drawing-room, and with books not three months' old on his table, instead of Fox's Martyrs and Baker's Chronicle—yet still retaining many a sacred old prejudice, that, like the knots in his native oak, rather adds to the ornament of the grain than takes from the strength of the tree. Opposite to the window, the high chimney-piece rose to the heavy cornice of the ceiling, with dark panels glistening against the moonlight. The broad and rather clumsy chintz sofas and settees of the reign, of George III., contrasted at intervals with the tall backed chairs of a far more distant generation, when ladies in fardingales, and gentlemen in trunk-hose, seem never to have indulged in horizontal positions. The walls, of shining wainscot, were thickly covered, chiefly with family pictures; though now and then some Dutch fair, or battle-piece, showed that a former proprietor had been less exclusive in his taste for the arts. The pianoforte stood open near the fireplace; a long dwarf bookcase, at the far end, added its sober smile to the room. That bookcase contained what was called "The Lady's Library," a collection commenced by the Squire's grandmother, of pious memory, and completed by his mother, who had more taste for the lighter letters, with but little addition from the bibliomaniac tendencies of the present Mrs Hazeldean—who, being no great reader, contented herself with subscribing to the Book Club. In this feminine Bodleian, the sermons collected by Mrs Hazeldean, the grandmother, stood cheek-by-jowl beside the novels purchased by Mrs Hazeldean, the mother.

But to be sure, the novels, in spite of very inflammatory titles, such as "Fatal Sensibility," "Errors of the Heart," &c., were so harmless that I doubt if the sermons could have had much to say against their next-door neighbours—and that is all that can be expected by the best of us.

A parrot dozing on his perch—some gold fish fast asleep in their glass bowl—two or three dogs on the rug, and Flimsey, Miss Jemima's spaniel, curled into a ball on the softest sofa—Mrs Hazeldean's work-table, rather in disorder, as if it had been lately used—the St James's Chronicle dangling down from a little tripod near the Squire's arm-chair—a high screen of gilt and stamped leather fencing off the card-table; all these, dispersed about a room large enough to hold them all and not seem crowded, offered many a pleasant resting-place for the eye, when it turned from the world of nature to the home of man.

But see, Captain Barnabas, fortified by his fourth cup of tea, has at length summoned courage to whisper to Mrs Hazeldean, "don't you think the Parson will be impatient for his rubber?" Mrs Hazeldean glanced at the Parson, and smiled; but she gave the signal to the Captain, and the bell was rung, lights were brought in, the curtains let down; in a few moments more the group had collected round the card-tables. The best of us are but human—that is not a new truth, I confess, but yet people forget it every day of their lives—and I dare say there are many who are charitably thinking at this very moment, that my Parson ought not to be playing at whist. All I can say to those rigid disciplinarians is, "Every man has his favourite sin: whist was Parson Dale's!—ladies and gentlemen, what is yours?" In truth, I must not set up my poor parson, now-a-days, as a pattern parson—it is enough to have one pattern in a village no bigger than Hazeldean, and we all know that Lenny Fairfield has bespoken that place,—and got the patronage of the stocks for his emoluments! Parson Dale was ordained, not indeed so very long ago, but still at a time when churchmen took it a great deal more easily than they do now. The elderly parson of that day played his rubber as a matter of course, the middle-aged parson was sometimes seen riding to cover, (I knew a schoolmaster, a doctor of divinity, and an excellent man, whose pupils were chiefly taken from the highest families in England, who hunted regularly three times a-week during the season,) and the young parson would often sing a capital song—not composed by David—and join in those rotary dances, which certainly David never danced before the ark.

Does it need so long a prolegomenon to excuse thee, poor Parson Dale, for turning up that ace of spades with so triumphant a smile at thy partner? I must own that nothing that well could add to the Parson's offence was wanting. In the first place, he did not play charitably, and merely to oblige other people. He delighted in the game—he rejoiced in the game—his whole heart was in the game—neither was he indifferent to the mammon of the thing, as a Christian pastor ought to have been. He looked very sad when he took his shillings out of his purse, and exceedingly pleased when he put the shillings that had just before belonged to other people into it. Finally, by one of those arrangements common with married people, who play at the same table, Mr and Mrs Hazeldean were invariably partners, and no two people could play worse; while Captain Barnabas, who had played at Graham's with honour and profit, necessarily became partner to Parson Dale, who himself played a good steady parsonic game. So that, in strict truth, it was hardly fair play—it was almost swindling—the combination of these two great dons against that innocent married couple! Mr Dale, it is true, was aware of this disproportion of force, and had often proposed either to change partners or to give odds, propositions always scornfully scouted by the Squire and his lady; so that the Parson was obliged to pocket his conscience, together with the ten points which made his average winnings.

The strangest thing in the world is the different way in which whist affects the temper. It is no test of temper, as some pretend—not at all! The best tempered people in the world grow snappish at whist; and I have seen the most testy and peevish in the ordinary affairs of life bear their losses with the stoicism of Epictetus. This was notably manifested in the contrast between the present adversaries of the Hall and the Rectory. The Squire, who was esteemed as choleric a gentleman as most in the county, was the best-humoured fellow you could imagine when you set him down to whist opposite the sunny face of his wife. You never heard one of these incorrigible blunderers scold each other; on the contrary, they only laughed when they threw away the game, with four by honours in their hands. The utmost that was ever said was a "Well, Harry, that was the oddest trump of yours. Ho—ho—ho!" or a "Bless me, Hazeldean—why, they made three tricks, and you had the ace in your hand all the time! Ha—ha—ha!"

Upon which occasions Captain Barnabas, with great good humour, always echoed both the Squire's ho—ho—ho! and Mrs Hazeldean's ha—ha—ha!

Not so the Parson. He had so keen and sportsmanlike an interest in the game, that even his adversaries' mistakes ruffled him. And you would hear him, with elevated voice and agitated gestures, laying down the law, quoting Hoyle, appealing to all the powers of memory and common sense against the very delinquencies by which he was enriched—a waste of eloquence that always heightened the hilarity of Mr and Mrs Hazeldean. While these four were thus engaged, Mrs Dale, who had come with her husband despite her headache, sate on the sofa beside Miss Jemima, or rather beside Miss Jemima's Flimsey, which had already secured the centre of the sofa, and snarled at the very idea of being disturbed. And Master Frank—at a table by himself—was employed sometimes in looking at his pumps, and sometimes at Gilray's Caricatures, with which his mother had provided him for his intellectual requirements. Mrs Dale, in her heart, liked Miss Jemima better than Mrs Hazeldean, of whom she was rather in awe, notwithstanding they had been little girls together, and occasionally still called each other Harry and Carry. But those tender diminutives belonged to the "Dear" genus, and were rarely employed by the ladies, except at those times when—had they been little girls still, and the governess out of the way—they would have slapped and pinched each other. Mrs Dale was still a very pretty woman, as Mrs Hazeldean was still a very fine woman. Mrs Dale painted in water colours and sang, and made card-racks and pen-holders, and was called an "elegant accomplished woman." Mrs Hazeldean cast up the Squire's accounts, wrote the best part of his letters, kept a large establishment in excellent order, and was called "a clever, sensible woman." Mrs Dale had headaches and nerves, Mrs Hazeldean had neither nerves nor headaches. Mrs Dale said, "Harry had no real harm in her, but was certainly very masculine." Mrs Hazeldean said, "Carry would be a good creature, but for her airs and graces." Mrs Dale said Mrs Hazeldean was "just made to be a country squire's lady." Mrs Hazeldean said, "Mrs Dale was the last person in the world who ought to have been a parson's wife." Carry, when she spoke of Harry to a third person, said, "Dear Mrs Hazeldean." Harry, when she referred incidentally to Carry, said, "Poor Mrs Dale." And now the reader knows why Mrs Hazeldean called Mrs Dale "poor," at least as well as I do. For, after all, the word belonged to that class in the female vocabulary which may be called "obscure significants," resembling the Konx Ompax, which hath so puzzled the inquirers into the Eleusinian Mysteries; the application is rather to be illustrated than the meaning to be exactly explained.

"That's really a sweet little dog of yours, Jemima," said Mrs Dale, who was embroidering the word Caroline on the border of a cambric pocket-handkerchief, but edging a little farther off, as she added, "he'll not bite, will he?" "Dear me, no!" said Miss Jemima; but (she added, in a confidential whisper,) "don't say he—'tis a lady dog!" "Oh," said Mrs Dale, edging off still farther, as if that confession of the creature's sex did not serve to allay her apprehensions—"oh, then, you carry your aversion to the gentlemen even to lap-dogs—that is being consistent indeed, Jemima!"

Miss Jemima.—"I had a gentleman dog once—a pug!—they are getting very scarce now. I thought he was so fond of me—he snapped at every one else;—the battles I fought for him! Well, will you believe,—I had been staying with my friend Miss Smilecox at Cheltenham. Knowing that William is so hasty, and his boots are so thick, I trembled to think what a kick might do. So, on coming here, I left Buff—that was his name—with Miss Smilecox." (A pause.)

Mrs Dale, looking up languidly.—"Well, my love."

Miss Jemima.—"Will you believe it, I say, when I returned to Cheltenham, only three months afterwards, Miss Smilecox had seduced his affections from me, and the ungrateful creature did not even know me again. A pug, too—yet people say pugs are faithful!!! I am sure they ought to be, nasty things. I have never had a gentleman dog since—they are all alike, believe me—heartless, selfish creatures."

Mrs Dale.—"Pugs? I dare say they are!"

Miss Jemima, with spirit.—"Men!—I told you it was a gentleman dog!"

Mrs Dale, apologetically.—"True, my love, but the whole thing was so mixed up!"

Miss Jemima.—"You saw that cold-blooded case of Breach of Promise of Marriage in the papers—an old wretch, too, of sixty-four. No age makes them a bit better. And when one thinks that the end of all flesh is approaching, and that—"

Mrs Dale, quickly, for she prefers Miss Jemima's other hobby to that black one upon which she is preparing to precede the bier of the universe.—"Yes, my love, we'll avoid that subject, if you please. Mr Dale has his own opinions, and it becomes me, you know, as a parson's wife," (said smilingly; Mrs Dale has as pretty a dimple as any of Miss Jemima's, and makes more of that one than Miss Jemima of three,) "to agree with him—that is, in theology."

Miss Jemima, earnestly.—"But the thing is so clear, if you would but look into—"

Mrs Dale, putting her hand on Miss Jemima's lips playfully.—"Not a word more. Pray, what do you think of the Squire's tenant at the Casino, Signor Riccabocca? An interesting creature, is not he?"

Miss Jemima.—"Interesting! Not to me. Interesting? Why is he interesting?"

Mrs Dale is silent, and turns her handkerchief in her pretty little white hands, appearing to contemplate the R in Caroline.

Miss Jemima, half pettishly, half coaxingly.—"Why is he interesting? I scarcely ever looked at him; they say he smokes, and never eats. Ugly, too!"

Mrs Dale.—"Ugly—no. A fine head—very like Dante's—but what is beauty?"

Miss Jemima.—"Very true; what is it indeed? Yes, as you say, I think there is something interesting about him; he looks melancholy, but that may be because he is poor."

Mrs Dale.—"It is astonishing how little one feels poverty when one loves. Charles and I were very poor once—before the Squire——." Mrs Dale paused, looked towards the Squire, and murmured a blessing, the warmth of which brought tears into her eyes. "Yes," she added, after a pause, "we were very poor, but we were happy even then, more thanks to Charles than to me," and tears from a new source again dimmed those quick lively eyes, as the little woman gazed fondly on her husband, whose brows were knit into a black frown over a bad hand.

Miss Jemima.—"It is only those horrid men who think of money as a source of happiness. I should be the last person to esteem a gentleman less because he was poor."

Mrs Dale.—"I wonder the Squire does not ask Signor Riccabocca here more often. Such an acquisition we find him!"

The Squire's voice from the card table.—"Whom ought I to ask more often, Mrs Dale?"

Parson's voice impatiently.—"Come—come—come, Squire: play to my queen of diamonds—do!"

Squire.—"There, I trump it—pick up the trick, Mrs H."

Parson.—"Stop! stop! trump my diamond?"

The Captain, solemnly.—"Trick turned—play on, Squire."

Squire.—"The king of diamonds."

Mrs Hazeldean.—"Lord! Hazeldean—why, that's the most barefaced revoke—ha—ha—ha! trump the queen of diamonds and play out the king! well I never—ha—ha—ha!"

Captain Barnabas, in tenor.—"Ha, ha, ha!"

Squire.—"And so I have, bless my soul—ho, ho, ho!"

Captain Barnabas, in bass.—"Ho—ho—ho."

Parson's voice raised, but drowned by the laughter of his adversaries and the firm clear tone of Captain Barnabas:—"Three to our score!—game!"

Squire, wiping his eyes.—"No help for it, Harry—deal for me! Whom ought I to ask, Mrs Dale? (waxing angry.) First time I ever heard the hospitality of Hazeldean called in question!"

Mrs Dale.—"My dear sir, I beg a thousand pardons, but listeners—you know the proverb."

Squire, growling like a bear.—"I hear nothing but proverbs ever since we have had that Mounseer among us. Please to speak plainly, marm."

Mrs Dale, sliding into a little temper at being thus roughly accosted.—"It was of Mounseer, as you call him, that I spoke, Mr Hazeldean."

Squire.—"What! Rickeybockey?"

Mrs Dale, attempting the pure Italian accentuation.—"Signor Riccabocca."

Parson, slapping his cards on the table in despair.—"Are we playing at whist, or are we not?"

The Squire, who is fourth player, drops the king to Captain Higginbotham's lead of the ace of hearts. Now the Captain has left queen, knave, and two other hearts—four trumps to the queen and nothing to win a trick with in the two other suits. This hand is therefore precisely one of those in which, especially after the fall of that king of hearts in the adversary's hand, it becomes a matter of reasonable doubt whether to lead trumps or not. The Captain hesitates, and not liking to play out his good hearts with the certainty of their being trumped by the Squire, nor, on the other hand, liking to open the other suits in which he has not a card that can assist his partner, resolves, as becomes a military man, in such dilemma, to make a bold push and lead out trumps, in the chance of finding his partner strong, and so bringing in his long suit.

Squire, taking advantage of the much meditating pause made by the Captain—"Mrs Dale, it is not my fault. I have asked Rickeybockey—time out of mind. But I suppose I am not fine enough for those foreign chaps—he won't come—that's all I know!"

Parson, aghast at seeing the Captain play out trumps, of which he, Mr Dale, has only two, wherewith he expects to ruff the suit of spades of which he has only one, (the cards all falling in suits) while he has not a single other chance of a trick in his hand.—"Really, Squire, we had better give up playing if you put out my partner in this extraordinary way—jabber—jabber—jabber!"

Squire.—"Well, we must be good children, Harry. What!—trumps, Barney? Thank ye for that!" And the Squire might well be grateful, for the unfortunate adversary has led up to ace king knave—with two other trumps. Squire takes the Parson's ten with his knave, and plays out ace king; then, having cleared all the trumps except the Captain's queen and his own remaining two, leads off tierce major in that very suit of spades of which the Parson has only one,—and the Captain, indeed, but two—forces out the Captain's queen, and wins the game in a canter.

Parson, with a look at the Captain which might have become the awful brows of Jove, when about to thunder.—"That, I suppose, is the newfashioned London play! In my time the rule was 'First save the game, then try to win it.'"

Captain.—"Could not save it, sir."

Parson, exploding.—"Not save it!—two ruffs in my own hand—two tricks certain till you took them out! Monstrous! The rashest trump"—Seizes the cards—spreads them on the table, lip quivering, hands trembling—tries to show how five tricks could have been gained—(N.B. it is short whist, which Captain Barnabas had introduced at the Hall) can't make out more than four—Captain smiles triumphantly—Parson in a passion, and not at all convinced, mixes all the cards together again, and falling back in his chair, groans, with tears in his voice.—"The cruellest trump! the most wanton cruelty!"

The Hazeldeans in chorus.-"Ho—ho—ho! Ha—ha—ha!"

The Captain, who does not laugh this time, and whose turn it is to deal, shuffles the cards for the conquering game of the rubber with as much caution and prolixity as Fabius might have employed in posting his men. The Squire gets up to stretch his legs, and, the insinuation against his hospitality recurring to his thoughts, calls out to his wife—"Write to Rickeybockey to-morrow yourself, Harry, and ask him to come and spend two or three days here. There, Mrs Dale, you hear me?"

"Yes," said Mrs Dale, putting her hands to her ears in implied rebuke at the loudness of the Squire's tone. "My dear sir, do remember that I'm a sad nervous creature."

"Beg pardon," muttered Mr Hazeldean, turning to his son, who, having got tired of the caricatures, had fished out for himself the great folio County History, which was the only book in the library that the Squire much valued, and which he usually kept under lock and key, in his study, together with the field-books and steward's accounts, but which he had reluctantly taken into the drawing-room that day, in order to oblige Captain Higginbotham. For the Higginbothams—an old Saxon family, as the name evidently denotes—had once possessed lands in that very county. And the Captain—during his visits to Hazeldean Hall—was regularly in the habit of asking to look into the County History, for the purpose of refreshing his eyes, and renovating his sense of ancestral dignity with the following paragraph therein:—"To the left of the village of Dunder, and pleasantly situated in a hollow, lies Botham Hall, the residence of the ancient family of Higginbotham, as it is now commonly called. Yet it appears by the county rolls, and sundry old deeds, that the family formerly styled itself Higges, till, the Manor House lying in Botham, they gradually assumed the appellation of Higges-in-botham, and in process of time, yielding to the corruptions of the vulgar, Higginbotham."

"What, Frank! my County History!" cried the Squire. "Mrs H. he has got my County History!"

"Well, Hazeldean, it is time he should know something about the County."

"Ay, and History too," said Mrs Dale, malevolently—for the little temper was by no means blown over.

Frank.—"I'll not hurt it, I assure you, sir. But I'm very much interested just at present."

The Captain, putting down the cards to cut.—"You've got hold of that passage about Botham Hall, page 706, eh?"

Frank.—"No; I was trying to make out how far it is to Mr Leslie's place, Rood Hall. Do you know, mother?"

Mrs Hazeldean.—"I can't say I do. The Leslies don't mix with the county; and Rood lies very much out of the way."

Frank.—"Why don't they mix with the county?"

Mrs Hazeldean.—"I believe they are poor, and therefore I suppose they are proud: they are an old family."

Parson, thrumming on the table with great impatience.—"Old fiddledee!—talking of old families when the cards have been shuffled this half hour!"

Captain Barnabas.—"Will you cut for your partner, ma'am?"

Squire, who has been listening to Frank's inquiries with a musing air.—"Why do you want to know the distance to Rood Hall?"

Frank, rather hesitatingly.—"Because Randal Leslie is there for the holidays, sir."

Parson.—"Your wife has cut for you, Mr Hazeldean. I don't think it was quite fair; and my partner has turned up a deuce—deuce of hearts. Please to come and play, if you mean to play."

The Squire returns to the table, and in a few minutes the game is decided by a dexterous finesse of the Captain against the Hazeldeans. The clock strikes ten: the servants enter with a tray; the Squire counts up his own and his wife's losings; and the Captain and Parson divide sixteen shillings between them.

Squire.—"There, Parson, I hope now you'll be in a better humour. You win enough out of us to set up a coach and four."

"Tut!" muttered the Parson; "at the end of the year, I'm not a penny the richer for it all."

And, indeed, monstrous as that assertion seemed, it was perfectly true, for the Parson portioned out his gains into three divisions. One-third he gave to Mrs Dale, for her own special pocket-money; what became of the second third he never owned, even to his better half—but certain it was, that every time the Parson won seven-and-sixpence, half-a-crown, which nobody could account for, found its way to the poor-box; while the remaining third, the Parson, it is true, openly and avowedly retained: but I have no manner of doubt that, at the year's end, it got to the poor quite as safely as if it had been put into the box.

The party had now gathered round the tray, and were helping themselves to wine and water, or wine without water—except Frank, who still remained poring over the map in the County History, with his head leaning on his hands, and his fingers plunged in his hair.

"Frank," said Mrs Hazeldean, "I never saw you so studious before."

Frank started up, and coloured, as if ashamed of being accused of too much study in anything.

The Squire, with a little embarrassment in his voice.—"Pray, Frank, what do you know of Randal Leslie?"

"Why, sir, he is at Eton."

"What sort of a boy is he?" asked Mrs Hazeldean.

Frank hesitated, as if reflecting, and then answered—"They say he is the cleverest boy in the school. But then he saps."

"In other words," said Mr Dale, with proper parsonic gravity, "he understands that he was sent to school to learn his lessons, and he learns them. You call that sapping—I call it doing his duty. But pray, who and what is this Randal Leslie, that you look so discomposed, Squire?"

"Who and what is he?" repeated the Squire, in a low growl. "Why, you know, Mr Audley Egerton married Miss Leslie the great heiress; and this boy is a relation of hers. I may say," added the Squire, "that he is as near a relation of mine, for his grandmother was a Hazeldean. But all I know about the Leslies is, that Mr Egerton, as I am told, having no children of his own, took up young Randal, (when his wife died, poor woman,) pays for his schooling, and has, I suppose, adopted the boy as his heir. Quite welcome. Frank and I want nothing from Mr Audley Egerton, thank heaven."

"I can well believe in your brother's generosity to his wife's kindred," said the Parson sturdily, "for I am sure Mr Egerton is a man of strong feeling."

"What the deuce do you know about Mr Egerton? I don't suppose you could ever have even spoken to him."

"Yes," said the Parson, colouring up, and looking confused, "I had some conversation with him once;" and observing the Squire's surprise, he added—"when I was curate at Lansmere—and about a painful business connected with the family of one of my parishioners."

"Oh! one of your parishioners at Lansmere—one of the constituents Mr Audley Egerton threw over, after all the pains I had taken to get him his seat. Rather odd you should never have mentioned this before, Mr Dale!"

"My dear sir," said the Parson, sinking his voice, and in a mild tone of conciliatory expostulation, "you are so irritable whenever Mr Egerton's name is mentioned at all."

"Irritable!" exclaimed the Squire, whose wrath had been long simmering, and now fairly boiled over.—"Irritable, sir! I should think so: a man for whom I stood godfather at the hustings, Mr Dale! a man for whose sake I was called a 'prize ox,' Mr Dale! a man for whom I was hissed in a market-place, Mr Dale! a man for whom I was shot at, in cold blood, by an officer in his Majesty's service, who lodged a ball in my right shoulder, Mr Dale! a man who had the ingratitude, after all this, to turn his back on the landed interest—to deny that there was any agricultural distress in a year which broke three of the best farmers I ever had, Mr Dale!—a man, sir, who made a speech on the Currency which was complimented by Ricardo, a Jew! Good heavens! a pretty parson you are, to stand up for a fellow complimented by a Jew! Nice ideas you must have of Christianity. Irritable, sir!" now fairly roared the Squire, adding to the thunder of his voice the cloud of a brow, which evinced a menacing ferocity that might have done honour to Bussy d'Amboise or Fighting Fitzgerald. "Sir, if that man had not been my own half-brother, I'd have called him out. I have stood my ground before now. I have had a ball in my right shoulder. Sir, I'd have called him out."

"Mr Hazeldean! Mr Hazeldean! I'm shocked at you," cried the Parson; and, putting his lips close to the Squire's ear, he went on in a whisper—"What an example to your son! You'll have him fighting duels one of these days, and nobody to blame but yourself."

This warning cooled Mr Hazeldean; and, muttering, "Why the deuce did you set me off?" he fell back into his chair, and began to fan himself with his pocket-handkerchief.

The Parson skilfully and remorselessly pursued the advantage he had gained. "And now, that you may have it in your power to show civility and kindness to a boy whom Mr Egerton has taken up, out of respect to his wife's memory—a kinsman, you say, of your own—and who has never offended you—a boy whose diligence in his studies proves him to be an excellent companion to your son;—Frank," (here the Parson raised his voice,) "I suppose you wanted to call on young Leslie, as you were studying the county map so attentively?"

"Why, yes," answered Frank, rather timidly, "if my father did not object to it. Leslie has been very kind to me, though he is in the sixth form, and, indeed, almost the head of the school."

"Ah," said Mrs Hazeldean, "one studious boy has a fellow-feeling for another; and though you enjoy your holidays, Frank, I am sure you read hard at school."

Mrs Dale opened her eyes very wide, and stared in astonishment.

Mrs Hazeldean retorted that look with great animation. "Yes, Carry," said she, tossing her head, "though you may not think Frank clever, his masters find him so. He got a prize last half. That beautiful book, Frank—hold up your head, my love—what did you get it for?"

Frank, reluctantly.—"Verses, ma'am."

Mrs Hazeldean, with triumph.—"Verses!—there, Carry, verses!"

Frank, in a hurried tone.—"Yes, but Leslie wrote them for me."

Mrs Hazeldean, recoiling.—"O Frank! a prize for what another did for you—that was mean."

Frank, ingenuously.—"You can't be more ashamed, mother, than I was when they gave me the prize."

Mrs Dale, though previously provoked at being snubbed by Harry, now showing the triumph of generosity over temper.—"I beg your pardon, Frank. Your mother must be as proud of that shame as she was of the prize."

Mrs Hazeldean puts her arm round Frank's neck, smiles beamingly on Mrs Dale, and converses with her son in a low tone about Randal Leslie. Miss Jemima now approached Carry, and said in an "aside,"—"But we are forgetting poor Mr Riccabocca. Mrs Hazeldean, though the dearest creature in the world, has such a blunt way of inviting people—don't you think if you were to say a word to him, Carry?"

Mrs Dale kindly, as she wraps her shawl round her.—"Suppose you write the note yourself. Meanwhile, I shall see him, no doubt."

Parson, putting his hand on the Squire's shoulder.—"You forgive my impertinence, my kind friend. We parsons, you know, are apt to take strange liberties, when we honour and love folks, as I do you."

"Pish!" said the Squire, but his hearty smile came to his lips in spite of himself.—"You always get your own way, and I suppose Frank must ride over and see this pet of my—"

"Brother's," quoth the Parson, concluding the sentence in a tone which gave to the sweet word so sweet a sound that the Squire would not correct the Parson, as he had been about to correct himself.

Mr Dale moved on; but as he passed Captain Barnabas, the benignant character of his countenance changed sadly.

"The cruellest trump, Captain Higginbotham!" said he sternly, and stalked by—majestic.

The night was so fine that the Parson and his wife, as they walked home, made a little dÉtour through the shrubbery.

Mrs Dale.—"I think I have done a good piece of work to-night."

Parson, rousing himself from a reverie.—"Have you, Carry?—it will be a very pretty handkerchief."

Mrs Dale.—"Handkerchief!—nonsense, dear. Don't you think it would be a very happy thing for both, if Jemima and Signor Riccabocca could be brought together?"

Parson.—"Brought together!"

Mrs Dale.—"You do snap one up so, my dear—I mean if I could make a match of it."

Parson.—"I think Riccabocca is a match already, not only for Jemima, but yourself into the bargain."

Mrs Dale, smiling loftily.—"Well, we shall see. Was not Jemima's fortune about £4000?"

Parson dreamily, for he is relapsing fast into his interrupted reverie;—"Ay—ay—I daresay."

Mrs Dale.—"And she must have saved! I dare say it is nearly £6000 by this time;—eh! Charles dear, you really are so—good gracious, what's that!"

As Mrs Dale made this exclamation, they had just emerged from the shrubbery, into the village green.

Parson.—"What's what?"

Mrs Dale pinching her husband's arm very nippingly.—"That thing—there—there."

Parson.—"Only the new stocks, Carry; I don't wonder they frighten you, for you are a very sensible woman. I only wish they would frighten the Squire."

CHAPTER XIII.

Supposed to be a letter from Mrs Hazeldean to——Riccabocca, Esq., The Casino; but edited, and indeed composed, by Miss Jemima Hazeldean.