LIBRARY OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
 AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 
 
 Albert Sachs 
 
 BOOKSTACKS 
 
y 
 
 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
G. WOODFALL, axgbl court, SKrNNER street, l^NDONr 
 
TYLNEY HALL, 
 
 BY THOMAS HOOD. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 A. H. BAILY AND CO., 83, CORNIIILL. 
 
 MDCCCXXXIV. 
 
82.3 
 
 H 76.3± 
 
 V. I 
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE. 
 
 ^ MY LORD DUKE, 
 
 ^ It has often hapjoened to me in my sea-side ram- 
 bles to behold the name of some Illustrious Per- 
 \j sonage gracing a craft of very humble pretensions. 
 7} Such an inscription, doubtless, exalts the vessel 
 ^ in the eyes of its owner ; for instance, the master 
 C of the William the Fourth must feel something of 
 > the conscious dignity of a Prime Minister, when 
 he takes the helm in his hand to guide his Sove - 
 reign through his watery empire. 
 '^ Sometimes the name on the stern of the vessel 
 f is a memorial of past kindness and condescension 
 "^ on the part of the noble Godfather or Godmother ; 
 5 and then, far as the wind may urge, or the waves 
 Q compel the little bark, a sentiment of respect, gra- 
 ^ titude, and attachment goes along v.ith it. In 
 4 perpetuating these feelings, a fishing-boat may be- 
 *^ come a pleasure-boat to its proprietor. 
 
 ^ 
 
VI DEDICATION. 
 
 In this spirit I prefix Your Grace's name to 
 
 this Work, the first I launch of its kind ; and 
 
 whether it be fated to Hve at sea, or to rot on 
 
 shore, it will bear witness that I have the honour 
 
 to be, 
 
 My Lord Duke, 
 
 Your Grace's 
 
 Much obliged and devoted Servant, 
 
 THOMAS HOOD. 
 
 Lake House, Wanstead, 
 October 20th, 1834. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I WAS sitting snugly in my sanctorum, with the 
 remains of a bottle of port wine before me, where- 
 with, according to custom, I had dismissed a 
 new work from the stocks, when, after a pre- 
 liminary tap at the door, two strangers presented 
 themselves, and with much bowing and many in- 
 vitations were induced to take chairs on either 
 side of the table* I saw them individually glance 
 at the shallow pool of purple that occupied the 
 bottom of the decanter ; and, with my usual sense 
 of the duties of hospitality, before they had done 
 hemming and clearing their throats preparatory 
 to declaring the purport of their visit, a fresh 
 magnum was glowing through the crystal. 
 Whilst they were enjoying and commending the 
 raciness of a celebrated vintage, I took the oppor- 
 tunity of scrutinizing my guests; and certainly 
 no two human beings could present more essential 
 differences both in face and figure. One was tall 
 
Vlll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and thin, with a preposterously long body and a 
 lugubrious pale face ; whereas the other was short 
 and punchy, with a round, shining, chubby, ruddy 
 countenance, that did not seem to have kept pace 
 with his age, but had remained a boy's head on a 
 man's shoulders. He spoke smartly, with a brisk, 
 merry voice, occasionally breaking into a joyous 
 chuckle, without any apparent cause but the mere 
 exuberance of animal spirits. His companion, on 
 the contrary, had a slow, deep, melancholy drawl 
 with a touch of the conventicle twang in it, and 
 he indulged in periodical suspirations as regularly 
 recurring as the pattern of an area-railing, ten 
 breathings and then a sigh, ten more and another 
 sigh, and so on. I could hardly help comparing my- 
 self, with all due modesty as to talents, to Garrick 
 between Tragedy and Comedy, in the celebrated 
 picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds. One peculiarity 
 forcibly struck my notice ; at every sip of his wine 
 the little fellow's eyes brightened and twinkled 
 with greater glee, till every instant I expected he 
 would break out into some lusty carol ; whilst the 
 other took great gulps, and at every draught be- 
 came more dull and dismal ; as if he had been 
 
INTRODUCTION. IX 
 
 swallowing so much ditch-water. Every inch of 
 his face seemed to take an ell, and his voice be- 
 came proportionately doleful, till at last it fairly 
 tolled like a passing-bell. Both seemed to feel 
 some awkwardness at broaching the subject of 
 their visit ; and, after sundry significant nods and 
 winks had been bandied to and fro between them, 
 I made bold to enquire their names, and to what 
 circumstance I was indebted for the honour of 
 their company. 
 
 " My friend, Mr. Maurice," said the little man, 
 " is the reader at Messrs. Stukeley's printing- 
 office." 
 
 " And my fi-iend, Mr. Collis," said the tall man, 
 " is the reader at Messrs. Burnett's." 
 
 "As such. Sir," said the Grig, with a grin, " it 
 was my pleasant duty to read, revise, and correct 
 the proof sheets of the first two volumes of your 
 mirth-provoking novel, — O lord !"— and throwing 
 himself back in his chair, he laughed till the tears 
 ran down his cheeks, as if at the remembrance of 
 some very funny passage. 
 
 "And in a similar capacity," said the Grave- 
 
 A3 
 
X INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Maurice, " I had the pleasure (a sigh) of reading 
 the third volume, and, without flattery, I enjoyed 
 it as much as ever I did any thing in my life." 
 
 The doleful look that accompanied this assur- 
 ance, rendered the compliment rather equivocal ; 
 however I bowed right and left, preserving my 
 gravity as well as I could, which was a little dis- 
 concerted by the extreme contrast of the two per- 
 sonages that alternately saluted me. The only 
 point they had in common was a relish for the 
 wine : they evidently thought it good, and kept 
 pulling proofs of it with the perseverance of press- 
 men ; but the long face only grew still gloomier, 
 whilst the short one, in quirks and cranks and 
 waggish workings, began to emulate that of Tim 
 Bobbin. He was pleased to inform me, with a 
 physiognomy which could only have been appro- 
 priately framed in a horse-collar, " that he had once 
 read a serious poem of mine with great gratifi- 
 cation, and he must regret I now did so little in 
 that line "; which drew from the sad one a dreary 
 sentence in favour of a certain ** jocose effusion," 
 coupled with a sort of lament that I now drew as 
 
INTROBUCTION. XI 
 
 little from my jocular vein as my jugular. Of 
 course I bowed again, albeit not a little siuprised 
 at such objections; and, after another glass of 
 wine, we came to business. I was given to un- 
 derstand that, according to the general custom of 
 printing-offices, my present work had undergone, 
 not a retrospective review, but a prospective one, 
 before the sheets were gathered for the binder, 
 and Messrs. Maurice and CoUis were the organs 
 of their respective fraternities, charged to convey 
 to me the strictures which the precocious critics 
 of their several coteries had thought proper to 
 pass upon my novel. Accustomed as I had been, 
 when Editor of a Magazine, to receive and listen 
 to comments from such quarters on the articles of 
 my contributors, I felt less surprise than another 
 author might have done at such an intimation, 
 and, like Sir Fretful Plagiary, I expressed my 
 perfect readiness to listen to their candid opinions. 
 Of course I expected to find a sharp flavour in 
 some of their remarks ; even as Dr. Kitchiner, in 
 a recipe for punch, now before me, actually re- 
 commends as the best acid, a due proportion of 
 " critic," a word he doubtlessly considered equi- 
 
XU INTRODUCTION. 
 
 valent to citric, or quintessence of lemon: so I 
 summoned up my philosophy accordingly. 
 
 The Momus began ; and I confess, to my asto- 
 nishment, his main objection to my novel in- 
 sinuated a dearth of the pathetic. " Not," he 
 said, " but there is abundance of bloodshed and 
 shedding of tears : if I recollect rightly, the se- 
 cond volume alone contains a divorce, arson, bur- 
 glary, and suicide. But what of that ? Excuse 
 me, Sir, for saying so, but we know your tricks. 
 We are not such fools as to snivel when all the 
 while you are grinning at us in your sleeve." 
 
 " Well, you amaze me, Sir," said I, involun- 
 tarily lifting up my hands ; " it was my own im- 
 pression that, on the whole, my novel was too 
 sombre." 
 
 " Excuse me," answered the Droll, " you were 
 never more mistaken. There are things that 
 might be pathetic from other pens^hut we know 
 you of old. Even your horrors don't take us in, 
 — show^ us a clot of coagulated blood, and we tip 
 one another the wink, and say * currant-jelly.' 
 For instance, there is the murder of Belmour, 
 Higgs tittered all the time he was setting it up ; 
 
INTRODUCTION. Xllt 
 
 and, for my own part, when the proof came be- 
 fore me at dinner-time, I confess I fairly choked 
 in my pint of stout." 
 
 " And I wish you had ! " I exclaimed, testily, 
 nettled beyond patience at such a reception of 
 my pet catastrophe. " But that 's the way with 
 your would-be critics : they are as absurd, as Dr. 
 Johnson in his definition of wit. It traces re- 
 semblances, says he, and judgment detects differ- 
 ences ; as if, forsooth, the same faculty that per- 
 ceived the likeness of a man to a monkey, did not 
 involve the ability of distinguishing a horse from 
 a hog. So, if a man be alive to the ludicrous, by 
 your lop-sided theory he can have no sympathy 
 with the pathetic: because he is sometimes in 
 jest, you will never allow him to be serious. I 
 do verily beheve, if I were to publish the elegy I 
 wrote on my youngest boy, who was taken from 
 me by scarlet fever last June, you would be hunt- 
 ing for jokes in the lamentation of a bereaved 
 father and looking for puns in it." 
 
 " To be sure. Sir," answered the Risible with a 
 broad grin. " I correct the Comic. But to return 
 to the novel. — There's the interview of Leonora 
 
XIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 with her lover, after taking the veil ; I thought it 
 the funniest thing I had ever read ! I did, Sir, 
 upon my life. But I didn't stand alone, the whole 
 office roared at it — roared. Sir," — and the villain 
 gave me a fresh sample of his own powers by 
 " laughing consumedly." 
 
 '' I assure you. Sir," said the Lugubrious, hast- 
 ening to interpose, " we think very differently at 
 Messrs. Stukeley'*s. To our tastes, and to my 
 own especially, your three volumes are too ex- 
 clusively gloomy and depressing. The composi- 
 tors compared it to newspaper work ; nothing but 
 Sh ocking Accidents, Afflicting Events, and Lament- 
 able Occurrences. It wants relief — an occasional 
 humourous sketch ; if there were but a single 
 chapter that one could smile over — but it is aU 
 wi'etched and miserable from title to finis." 
 
 I was going to reply, but the Democritus fore- 
 stalled me. " Ha ! ha ! ha ! ha! ho ! ho ! ho ! " 
 he shouted ; " Maurice, my boy, you should have 
 read the parting of Isabella and Theodore, when 
 he was banished !" and again his " lungs crowed 
 like chanticleer." 
 
 Was there ever such a provoking scoundrel ? I 
 
INTRODUCTION. XV 
 
 longed to make him laugh on the wrong side of 
 his mouth ; but I subdued the rising passion, and 
 addressed him with what I considered to be cool- 
 ness. "Tastes differ," I said, "and I cannot 
 answer for the vagaries it may choose to take with 
 certain individuals. For instance. Sir," (and I gave 
 him a nod, as much as to say you may take it to 
 yourself,) " Nero fiddled whilst Rome was burning ; 
 and there may be mental palates so depraved as to 
 find a mirthful relish even in the heart-rending of 
 a poor female, divorced for ever from the object 
 of her affections. As for the incident that made 
 you so merry. Sir, I can only say, that my own 
 family, and they ought to know me best, so little 
 suspected me of any underhand mockery, that 
 they bestowed their own tears on the misery of 
 Isabella. I will not swear that I did not turn a 
 little womanish myself at hearing the chapter in 
 question impressively read aloud by the touching 
 voice of my wife." 
 
 " And Pluto as / am in general," said the Hera- 
 clitus with a pavior's sigh, " I will not deny that 
 it drew iron tears down my cheek, when my wife 
 in the same manner read aloud the disasters of 
 
XVI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the poor unfortunate Pedrillo, and his terror when 
 detained by the bandittL" 
 
 " What, cry at that ! " ejaculated the Laugher, 
 and he burst into a fresh peal, which for the first 
 time I forgave him, as the distresses of Pedrillo 
 were intended to be of a ludicrous character ; but 
 I quickly revoked my pardon, when the fellow 
 added, " that it was as comical as any thing in the 
 book, the death-bed of Gaspar always excepted." 
 
 " Ay, now you are joking, CoUis," said the 
 Sepulchral, " the exit of the robber is undeniably 
 horrible, and so is the poisoning of Sancho — 
 beyond any thing in the range of fiction." 
 
 I stared alternately at the speakers, for the said 
 poisoning was merely imaginary, like that of Jus- 
 tice Frogmore in Humphrey Clinker. I could 
 hardly persuade myself but that the pair of Readers 
 had planted themselves upon me to enjoy a con- 
 certed jest at my expense, except that it would 
 have been an ofiensive liberty of the first magni- 
 tude. However I resolved to turn the tables, and 
 as they had given me some annoyance I determined 
 to retaliate. I was meditating on the means, 
 when after an important hem, with a tone pecu- 
 
INTRODUCTION. Xvii 
 
 liarly solemn, the Grave Maurice brought forward 
 an objection, to which he gave all the weight he 
 could by the specific gravity of his countenance. 
 
 " It is an ungrateful office," he said, " but as the 
 representative of a class distinguished as the 
 decidedly serious, I am called upon to notice 
 with reprehension the great freedoms you take 
 with a body of men, who might be called in 
 justice, as they are in derision, the Saints. It has 
 the censure of the whole office, — yes, Sir, down to 
 tlie very devils." 
 
 The ludicrous association conveyed by the last 
 part of the sentence made me join in an involun- 
 taiy chorus, with the Jovial ; but my constitutional 
 antipathy to cant and canters soon roused my 
 spleen, and left no more hilarity in my laugh than 
 in a hyaena's. " If you mean the picture of 
 Brother Pius," said I, '* it is but a rough sketch, a 
 mere outline, to the finished coloured portrait I 
 mean some day to draw of a hypocritical, canting, 
 trading, time-serving knave, — one who makes his 
 Ledger his Bible, and the latter his Waste-book; a 
 lying, cogging, Mawworm, that will commit strictly 
 pious frauds, and cheat to a decidedly serious 
 
XVlll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 amount. I know the breed well ; they are vile 
 birds of prey, not mounting upwards like the sweet 
 lark to carol at heaven's gate, but that they may 
 make a stoop the better upon earth and its carrion." 
 
 The dismal one turned up his eyes till I saW 
 nothing but the whites— an action which produced 
 a fresh burst of merriment from his opposite 
 neighbour, but it was a sound of which I began 
 to get weaiy, and I resolved if possible to rid my- 
 self of my guests. I drew myself up stiffly be- 
 fore I spoke. 
 
 " After all gentlemen, is there not something in 
 this of the Souter out of Selkirk, or the cobbler 
 beyond his last? To my humble apprehension 
 your province is to correct the press not the 
 Author; and I am compelled to say, that the 
 numerous mistakes and literal errors that have 
 been allowed to pass in my work, hint a laxity in 
 your peculiar duties, which is not to be atoned 
 for by your interference with matters for w^hich 
 you are not responsible. For instance, I wrote in 
 Scotch, *the wale' of the country, which looked, 
 I suppose, so * very like a whale' to you, that you 
 turned it into weal. Do you suppose that Auld 
 
INTRODUCTION. XIX 
 
 Rob Morris, ' the wale of auld men,' was a great 
 lubberly Leviathan, living in a valley, with oxen 
 and sheep of his own ? " 
 
 " Very good. Sir, very good," said the Momus, as 
 soon as he could articulate for laughing. " But 
 authors may thank their own crabbed scrawls for 
 the errors. Yoiu- own, for instance. Higgs kept 
 samples of it, and has bound them up like a book 
 of autographs, and certainly the collection pre- 
 sents as much variety as if all writers since 
 Cadmus had lent a hand to it. Sometimes it is a 
 little close niggle, as if you studied economy in 
 stationery ; at other times we receive bouncing 
 round text, as if you were amanuensis to Gog 
 and Magog. To-day the lines go as straight and 
 steadily as if you were writing a prize essay for 
 the Temperance Society; to-morrow they go 
 reeling up and down, as if your pen had dipped 
 into a brandy bottle by mistake for the inkstand. 
 Occasionally, when you are lazy, you favour us 
 with abbreviations, and we have to study a new 
 system of short-hand; and now and then you 
 teaze us with a set of mere hieroglyphics, that 
 persuade us you have been writing in your sleep. 
 
XX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 In short we know all your moods, Sir, — when you 
 are drowsy, and when you are lazy, when you 
 are half drunk or whole drunk ; when you are 
 dissatisfied, and when you are up in your stirrups, 
 and don't think small beer of yourself — that's 
 w^hen your d's and g's and y's flourish their tails. 
 We know all your weathers. Sir, and keep them 
 regularly recorded, day after day, like a meteoro- 
 logical register." 
 
 " The deuce you do ! " I exclaimed. " Then 
 Messrs. Burnett's have no more of my printing, 
 that's all," — but as I started up to ring the bell, 
 in order that the intruding gentlemen might be 
 shown out, I found myself broad awake, and 
 alone, in my sanctorum, with the relic of port 
 wine still unconsumed before me. I had been 
 merely dreaming : but the perversity of the two 
 visionarj^Keaders haunted me long afterwards, and 
 even at this moment I have some misgivings, 
 whether the following pages may not be fated to 
 meet with some real CoUises and Maurices in the 
 world, who will not peruse, 
 
 " In the same spirit that the Author writ." 
 
TYLNEY HALL 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " An old cloak makes a new jerkin j a withered serving-man a 
 fresh tapster." 
 
 Merry Wives op Windsor. 
 
 On the skirts of the extensive forest of H 
 
 there stood, perhaps still stands, a little inn or 
 house of entertainment, which by its sequestered 
 si+uation seemed destined for the occupation of 
 that anomalous character, a publican of retired 
 habits. Its locality, indeed, promised little more 
 custom than the site of that celebrated tavern on 
 Muckslush Heath, in Colman's comedy. On one 
 side the eye wandered over a wide barren level, 
 
 VOL. I. B 
 
2 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 clothed and variegated only by grass dwindled into 
 moss, and trees stunted into shrubs ; this bleak 
 waste was known by the significant name of the 
 Flats. On the other side stretched an immense 
 park, behind an angle of which lay perdue a small 
 village, the main prop and stay of Heady and Co.'s 
 entire, as retailed fi-om the tap of this sequestered 
 Diamond of the Desert. Over a side door, leading 
 to a diminutive yard, appeared a notification of 
 good entertainment for man and horse, with a hint 
 of a neat post chaise, whose post was almost a 
 sinecure ; for though Jonas kept a pair of horses 
 for hire, they were seldom let out, except to grass. 
 By way of sign, three Chinese pigs with long 
 ears would have puzzled a zoologist, but for the 
 superscription of " the Rabbits ;" while a writing 
 underneath informed the reader that there was an 
 ordinary every day at one, although historically 
 such a circumstance was extraordinary ; and an 
 addendum expressed, that this establishment was 
 kept by — for it did not keep — one Jonas Han way, 
 late coachman to Sir Theodore Bowles. Honest 
 Jonas had lived so steadily and soberly all his life. 
 
TVLNEY HALL. 3 
 
 that he could afford to take up the trade of making 
 others unsteady and unsober; however, in obedience 
 to his natural bent, he took the most retired public 
 house he could find ; and instead of " a fine stroke 
 of business in a desirable low hard-drinking neigh- 
 bourhood," according to advertisement, was the pro- 
 prietor of the snug genteel concern of the Rabbits, 
 doing no butts a week. The title of the house 
 was derived from the neighbouring warrens, and 
 might have induced a behef that it numbered a few 
 poachers among its customers ; but the house, on 
 the contrary, was a well-ordered one, at w^hich 
 even the modern Temperance Societies might have 
 held their anniversaries. Its chief visitors, indeed, 
 were a set of village tradesmen, who spent their 
 one sixpence or one shilling per night with a punc- 
 tual regularity, most of them being members of a 
 threepenny whist club, which held its sittings three 
 times a week. By help of this, and a very little 
 chance custom, Jonas contrived to keep in good 
 credit with his brewer and distiller, and to carry or 
 a concern, which, though it yearly swallowed u]- 
 his small annuity in the funds, was so much to 
 
 B 2 
 
4 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 his liking, that he would not have taken a hundred 
 pounds for the goodwill. Bred up from boyhood in 
 a sedate, early-rising, church -going family, he made 
 a point of emptying his tap-room — when it was not 
 empty of its own accord — at the hour of eleven ; and 
 on Sundays he was rigid in shutting up divinely ; 
 by which phrase he meant that he closed his doors 
 during divine service. In short, he drove his house as 
 discreetly, as soberly, and as steadily, as he had done 
 the old family vehicle with Sir Theodore Bowles 
 and the gout in its inside. His chief delight was in 
 reading the newspaper, and especially the parlia- 
 mentary debates ; though, till the hour of his death, 
 his parlour guests could never decide whether he 
 was Whig or Tory, but each secretly believed that 
 Jonas inclined to his own particular side. This 
 seeming impartiality procured him the honourable 
 situation of umpire to the whist club, till, having 
 given contrary opinions on every point of the game, 
 the players at last preferred to refer their disputed 
 cases to the summary arbitration of " heads or 
 tails," for at that time there was no Dispatch or 
 Bell's Life in London, to inform correspondents, 
 
TYLNEY HALT,. 5 
 
 " whether if A. held the ace of hearts, B. was en- 
 titled to play the deuce of diamonds to C.'s nine of 
 spades, which had fallen to D.'s ten of clubs, — A. 
 being a manied man and the rest all bachelors." 
 
 So much for Jonas. Fortune seemed to have 
 cast his lot amiss ; as the world goes he made but 
 a sorry sort of pubHcan, but he would have 
 made an excellent parish clerk. Mrs. Hanway, 
 on the contrary, as an Irishman would say, seemed 
 bom a landlady, and the very worst of her faults, 
 when tried at the bar, appeared of advantage to 
 her character. Technically speaking, her temper 
 was a little pricked, but its tartness proved of es- 
 sential service to a mistress who had commonly to 
 conti'ol a termagant cook and an obstreperous pot- 
 boy. Besides, the temper of her husband, which 
 was really drawn a little too mild, acted admi- 
 rably as a counterpoise, or, as he used to express 
 it himself, they made excellent " half and half." 
 Her other failing, for she had but a pair, " leaned 
 to virtue's side," and may be mentioned without 
 malice. In her single days she had lived in the 
 now almost obsolete situation of still-room woman 
 
6 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 to Lady Bowles, from whom she had imbibed a 
 benevolent curiosity into the ailments of the poor, 
 with an invincible desire to exhibit, as the faculty 
 call it, her drugs and simples. In her zeal, however, 
 to administer to all the " ills that flesh is heir to," 
 she scarcely paid due respect to the proverb of " let 
 ^vell alone," but seemed to think, with certain poli- 
 ticians, that constitutions are good for nothing but 
 to be mended. No soup-committee ever distri- 
 buted their decoctions to the poor with more libe- 
 rality than Mrs. Hanway: her still was literally 
 never still, but day and night dripped teas and 
 tinctures from herbs and drugs, whose virtues were 
 estimated in exact proportion to their nauseousness. 
 Some few patients she had, who took her prescrip- 
 lions for love, and the impatients she conciliated 
 by a presentation glass of Geneva. Many were the 
 hale invalids, and the Temperance Society may 
 publish the fact to their discredit, who consented to 
 take her doses for the sake of her drams. Unfor- 
 tunately her medical practice, though it brought 
 customers to the bar, was the cause of banishing one 
 or two w^ho could be ill spared from the tap-room 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 7 
 
 and pai'lour. Even thus, for instance, was the 
 Rabbits deprived of the steady Saturday patronage 
 of master Gregory the head constable, through a 
 few drops of something very wholesome, which 
 she had volunteered into his periodical glass of 
 grog. The zealous functionary in the discharge 
 of his duty on a certain night, had, by great vigi- 
 lance, succeeded in catching a cold instead of ap- 
 prehending a sheepstealer, and an awful wheezi- 
 ness was the consequence ; but let a constable be 
 ever so wheezy, he may reasonably object to such 
 a constable's miscellany as rum and water and 
 squills. 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 « Of such it may be said, that they do not play at cards, but only 
 play at playing at them," 
 
 Mrs. Battle's Opinions of Whist. 
 
 In the weather column of Moore's Almanac for 
 the year of our Lord 17 — , and exactly opposite 
 to the date of Friday the 19th of November, a state 
 of atmosphere was predicted unusually genial and 
 serene. Accordingly, on the morning of the 19th, 
 the wind began to blow with a violence un- 
 paralleled for half a century, accompanied by 
 occasional showers of hailstones, of a magnitude 
 so unexampled, that several natural philosophers 
 took the pains of measuring and pubhshing their 
 dimensions. As the gale set in from the south- 
 west, the Rabbits had the full benefit of its force, 
 the air not being at all composed in those Flats 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 9 
 
 which lay m front of that desolate house of call. 
 On the evening of that day, the same five faces 
 were in the parlour as if they had never left it 
 since the preceding club-night; and the usual 
 members of the lower house were vehemently puff- 
 ing in self-defence against a chimney which as- 
 serted the same privilege of smoking in a common 
 tap-room. Mrs. Hanway was in her bar, inwardly 
 lamenting that she could prescribe no home-made 
 soothing syrup for nature in convulsions ; while 
 Jonas wandered from room to room, listening to 
 one of the signs of the times taking its full s\Aing 
 of the tempest, till the emblematical rabbits seemed 
 to squeal as shrilly as pigs in a high Avind. Ex- 
 actly as the clock struck eight, Mr. Tablet, the 
 president of the whist-club, proposed to make a 
 iTibber: he was a grey-headed, weather-beaten 
 man, with short legs and a tall body, which, in 
 speaking, he swayed backwards and forwards with 
 a mechanical motion, which hinted that though 
 now a master mason, he had formerly sat in a 
 sentry-box cuid jDlayed at see-saw with a block of 
 marble. Catching up the solitary pack of cards, 
 
 B 3 
 
10 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 and giving them a clumsy shuffle, and looking 
 round the room, he addressed the members of his 
 board of green cloth with — 
 
 " Gentlemen, is any of you agreeable ?" 
 
 " For my parts, as nobody else speaks," said a 
 fat man with a thin voice, " I've no objections in 
 life to take a hand, provided I'm wanted to make 
 a fourth." 
 
 " That's two, then," said Tablet, " for in course, 
 as president, I sets the first rubber a-going. How 
 say you, Mr. Hands ?" 
 
 " Why you know," said Mr. Hands, " I seldom 
 or never play, as ever since my fit I've impaired 
 my memory, and am apt to revoke." 
 
 Mr. Benson and Mr. Walden were severally 
 appealed to, as the forlorn hope of the rubber, 
 when Mr. Benson " was perfectly agreeable to any- 
 thing, and to any pints they liked," as was also 
 Mr. Walden, the last man of the pack — but on the 
 impracticable condition, that they should be ex- 
 cused cutting in till after the first two rubbers or 
 so had been played out. 
 
 " Such being the case," said the president, " I 
 
TYLNEY HALL. Jl 
 
 have nothing left for me to say, except hicjacet ;" 
 and with these professional words, he deposited 
 the pack like a miniature monument on the green 
 baize. 
 
 After the foregoing ceremony, which, by the 
 way, occuiTed with little variation of request or 
 apology three times per week, this ghost of a' 
 whist-club subsided into a mere Wordsworthian 
 " party in a parlour ;" till at length a member 
 volunteered a song, if such a phrase may be ap- 
 plied to a song which had served in the line for 
 several years past. Those who have seen a smal] 
 thread of table beer, with a natural shake of its 
 own, issuing out of a nine-gallon cask, may form 
 an idea of the slender warble that transpired from 
 the fat man with a thin voice, in honour of the 
 " Maid of the Walley." Strange to say, weak a!> 
 it was, it was vehemently encored, as if the auditors 
 acted on the principle of the good man in the 
 Scottish song, 
 
 *' Syne if her typpenny chance to be sma' 
 We'll talc a good scour o't and ca't awa.'* 
 
 But the dwellers in cities accustomed to Maga- 
 
12 TYLNEY HALL, 
 
 zins de Nouveautes, and Theatres de Varietes, have 
 little conception of the monotonous routine in 
 which provincial regulars and orderlies find, not 
 merely content, but enjoyment. 
 
 The da capo had just reached the second line 
 of the second verse, when the air without, proving 
 stronger than the air within, burst open the dilapi- 
 dated casement, and a gust of wind came in, which 
 blew out the singer's voice like a rushhght. Imme- 
 diately, by favour of the opening, they distinguished 
 a voice calling lustily for help ; in a few seconds a 
 summons was repeated at the front door, which 
 w^as sj)eedily opened, and a stranger entered who 
 seemed to be on such bad terms with the lights, 
 that they all went out as he came in, and it was not 
 till he had made his way to the fire in the tap-room, 
 that his features could be recognised. 
 
 " As I live by bread," ejaculated the landlord, 
 " its unlucky Joe." 
 
 Joseph Spiller, the unfortunate postillion thus 
 referred to, was a living example of that cross- 
 grained fate, which attends upon certain devoted 
 individuals through life. Born under an evil star, 
 
TYLNEY HALL. IS 
 
 probably a falling one, he had been oftener thrown 
 from the saddle, or pitched from the bar, than any 
 postboy of his standing, or rather sitting. He was 
 literally a marked man in a stricter sense than the 
 term generally imj)lies, for the bridge of his nose was 
 broken, he had lost one eye, with the whole of his 
 front teeth, and had a limp in his left leg — personal 
 deodands levied against him from mishaps purely 
 accidental. He had been a careful driver, and a 
 sober, but sometimes the commissioners of roads 
 left stumbling blocks in his path, sometimes he was 
 the victim of inexperienced or inebriated chariot- 
 eers who drove against him ; and above all he had 
 the luck of being associated with more stumblers, 
 kickers, shyers, and other four-legged vices, than 
 any boy of his school. He had had as many horses 
 killed under him as Prince Eugene, and more run- 
 aways than the driver of the last stage to Gretna- 
 green. Rendered superstitious at last, by such a 
 succession of mishaps, poor Joe had become some- 
 thing of a fatalist ; he gave up inspecting the har- 
 ness, or looking at the linchpins, and was never 
 particularly ready to pull up his horse's head in 
 
14 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 case of a stumble. " It was all one," he said, " as 
 to how a horse was held in hand if he ^as rid by 
 a hunfortunate fellow that was homed on a Fri- 
 day." Want of care thus coalescing with want of 
 luck, an increased number of casualties obtained 
 for Joe the unenviable name of " unlucky," by 
 which Hanway described him. 
 
 " In the name of mercy, — Joe," said the host, 
 taking an upset for granted, " in the name of 
 mercy, Joe, who's hurt ? " 
 
 " He's as dead as a stubnail by this time," 
 whimpered Joe. 
 
 " Heaven forbid," said the landlord ; " but there's 
 no time to be lost." 
 
 '^ Such being the case we must have a shutter — 
 there's one blown off the hinges in the club-room," 
 suggested the president of the packmen. 
 
 " Lord love you," said Joe, " he don't want no 
 shutter — the knacker's drag is all he requires 
 now, poor thing." 
 
 " Thank goodness, it's a horse, then," said Mrs. 
 Hanway, " and not a human being." 
 
 " To be sure it is," answered Joe, " but that's 
 
TYLNEY HALl. 15 
 
 like my luck ; never a one else but me would have 
 had a job across the Flats, and on such a night; 
 some can't go wrong if they would, and with broad 
 day -light to help 'em, but for my part I can go off 
 the road in the dark." 
 
 " But the horse ?" inquired Jonas. 
 
 " Choked with his collar long afore I could dex- 
 tricate t'other, and with nobody inside by way of 
 helps, only a very young youth and an old one, 
 and him a scraping his shoes at death's door, and 
 as yellow as my silk jacket ; but that's my luck." 
 
 " Well, there's a Providence, even in posting," 
 exclaimed Mrs. Hanway, casting a side glance at 
 her jalaps and cordials. " Poor gentleman, a Hver 
 complaint, no doubt; but a strong cup of camomile 
 tea of a morning." — 
 
 " A stiff glass of summut over night is more like 
 to do him good," answered Joe, with a mechanical 
 movement towards the bar. 
 
 " And the poor dear child ?" inquired the con- 
 siderate Mrs. Hanway, filling out a glass of penny- 
 royal, which the postillion bolted without hesita- 
 tion. 
 
16 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 " I thought," said he, making a face, " that it 
 was a go of thunder and lightning; but that's my 
 luck." 
 
 At this juncture honest Jonas returned from 
 the stable-yard, and inquired as to the locality of 
 the travellers, who, in the mean-time, by virtue of 
 a temporary residence, were enjoying the right of 
 common. 
 
 " About a quarter of a mile off, more or less," 
 answered Joe ; " but there's no needs of hun-y — 
 I'll warrant the horse they've got with 'em for a 
 quiet un, cause why he's dead, and the windows 
 is all up and only one broke — they can't be more 
 comfortable considering, whether I takes a little 
 drop of summut or not ;" so saying, the postillion, 
 like a new member of Parliament, took his place 
 with an oath, and couldn't be persuaded to vacate 
 liis seat till he had accepted something equivalent 
 to the Chiltern Hundreds. His appetite and thirst 
 satisfied, he set forth, accompanied by boots, ostler, 
 and potboy, though in all but a pair, for the last 
 three offices were monopolised by one individual ; 
 they took with them a spare horse, and a bottle of 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 17 
 
 something against the night air, from Mrs. Han- 
 way, for the especial use of the invalid, and which, 
 be it said, went undiminished by a single drop to 
 its destination. 
 
 By this time the wind had become somewhat 
 " blown and scant of breath," only " roaring as 
 gently as a sucking dove ;" but although time's 
 whole eleven upon the clock had been bowled out, 
 each several member of the whist club seemed in- 
 clmed to act as a long stop ; a departure from their 
 established rule which could only be justified by 
 the expectation of post-chaise travellers at the 
 Rabbits. They were longer than ever they were 
 before in discussing their second tumblers, and 
 several, encouraged by the example of the president 
 himself, went even so far as to call for a glass be- 
 yond their ordinary- stint ; the third tumbler de- 
 spatched, they were slower than ever had been 
 known in the appropriation of their peculiar great- 
 coats and hats, and far more careful than common 
 in the adjustment of capes, collars, and silk-hand- 
 kerchiefs. Armed at last at all points against 
 weather, they were even then a thousand times 
 
18 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 more particular than they had ever been in their 
 inquiries as to the state of the night ; and sundry 
 deputations made a brief excursion into the open 
 air, for the ostensible purpose of verifying the 
 meteorological reports which they had received. 
 In short they temporised as adroitly as diploma- 
 tists of a higher grade, for the attainment of an 
 unavowed object. Fortune, however, which had 
 denied them a game at long whist, afforded them, 
 by way of amends, a protracted game of patience ; 
 for whether Joe had understated the distance, or 
 had met with unforeseen obstacles, it was a full 
 hour before his wheels rattled up to Jonas's Rabbit 
 Hutch. In the meantime Mrs. Hanway had made 
 the most precautionary preparations for the recep- 
 tion of guests who she understood had come fi'om 
 a hot climate into a cold one. Accordingly, as soon 
 as the young gentleman alighted, he was caught up 
 in a warm blanket and carried kicking up stairs 
 by the sturdy Jonas ; the next comer, before he 
 left the steps of the chaise, had a conservative 
 handkerchief clapped up to his face by the con- 
 siderate Mrs. Hanway ; and as she thought proper 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 19 
 
 to get him out of the damp air of the passage 
 as quickly as possible, the gazers who lined the 
 door of the club-room in expectation of seeing the 
 stranger, caught only a momentary glimpse of a 
 travelling cap, a bandana, and a blue cloak — fol- 
 lowed by a treacle posset and a warming pan. 
 
 " Well," said the manufacturer of tombstones, 
 as the effigy glided up stairs, " that's what I call 
 ' sic transit ;' " and with this remark he caught up 
 his hat and sallied forth homewards with his neigh- 
 bours of the village. "^ 
 
20 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 CHAPTER in. 
 
 '^^ You cannot hunt to-day, to-day, 
 Y'ou cannot hunt to-day ! — 
 But a hunting we will go ! 
 
 Thomas Rounding. 
 
 In the list of hunting appointments, as given in 
 
 the County Chronicle, the meeting of the H 
 
 Hounds for Saturday, the 20th of November, was 
 advertised to take place at Windmill Grange, a 
 fixture which brought the pack into the vicinity of 
 Hanway's public house. The morning was beau- 
 tiful for hunting, that is to say, what some people 
 would have called rather muggy, with very little 
 wind from the south, and a cloudy sky. Owing 
 to this auspicious weather the field was more nume- 
 rous than usual ; and the sportsmen welcomed with 
 peculiar pleasure the first appearance for the season 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 21 
 
 of their old friend and leader Sir Mark Tyrrel, 
 of Tylney Hall, the master of the hunt. During 
 the last two months a martyr to the gout, though 
 he would rather have been one of Fox's Martyrs, 
 he had never mounted a horse. The woeful case 
 of Witherington in Chevy Chase was light com- 
 pared with the Baronet's, who had thus four legs 
 taken from under him, for, in reality, he was a 
 modem Centaur. He did not, however, make as 
 manful a flight as the bold Esquire in the ballad — 
 like the ancient knights, he felt quite helpless when 
 unhorsed, and, after a feeble struggle, suiTendered 
 himself quietly into the hands of Dr. Bellamy, the 
 family physician. The Doctor, a formalist of the 
 old school, was, like Ollapod, a great adv ocate for 
 spring physic, and having vainly tried for some 
 years past to persuade Sir Mark to go through a 
 course of May medicine, seized with avidity on an 
 opportunity for making him swallow the whole 
 arrears in November. Accordingly he drenched 
 his patient so vigorously, that the latter began 
 sometimes to doubt whether he had not better have 
 called in the professional assistance of Master 
 
22 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 Burton, a practitioner whose prescriptions were ad- 
 ministered by help of a pitchfork and a cow's horn. 
 It is impossible to say how far he might have been 
 eventually reduced, if he had not washed down 
 every lowering draught with a large bumper of 
 Madeii-a, in furtherance of w^hich, his housekeeper, 
 who was no friend to Sangrado, caused his gruel 
 to become caudle, and his broth to be as like soup 
 as possible : — the best way, she said, to keep the 
 gout from flying to his stomach, was by filling it 
 with something else. By a similar freedom his 
 barley-water was rendered into Burton ale, and his 
 composing draught into a bishop. At last, on a 
 Saturday morning, when the Doctor called with a 
 design of allowing a little air and gentle exercise 
 in a garden chair, he was informed that his patient 
 had suffered a relapse into health, and had gone off 
 suddenly on Bedlamite, to meet the hounds at 
 Windmill Grange. 
 
 The appearance of the Baronet at the rendez- 
 vous in buckskins and scarlet, and mounted on his 
 famous grey horse, was hailed with more than one 
 involuntary view halloo, notwithstanding such a 
 
TYLNEY HALL. S3 
 
 sound was in the highest degree unseasonable, 
 considering the time and place. The hounds had 
 been already thrown into cover, and were drawing 
 with admirable steadiness, and the silence of 
 death, when the ill-timed welcome drew them all 
 off, huntsman, whippers-in, and company, to the 
 sound, — to the infinite chagrin of all parties, brute 
 or human; however, the pack was speedily at 
 work again in the underwood, amongst which fifty 
 vigorous tails were busily ranging, when another, 
 and still more unsportsmanlike shouting from the 
 opposite side of the wood, drew the whole cavalry 
 like a trumpet-call in that direction. In a moment 
 the horsemen gained the spot fi'om which the 
 sound proceeded, and discovered a postboy on a 
 tall, rawboned, piebald mare, who was floundering 
 and struggling her way through a patch of gorse. 
 The rider, who never ceased his outcry, was imme- 
 diately encircled by a score of horsemen, all open- 
 ing upon him with the same question, of where he 
 had seen the fox. 
 
 " An't please your honours," said the postboy, 
 with a respectful touch of his hat, " it's anything 
 
24 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 but varmint I have in my head at this present " 
 
 words which were barely pronounced when the 
 astonished utterer found himself in the middle of a 
 storm of whipthongs, that assailed him like a foul 
 wind from all quarters at once. Luckily for Un- 
 lucky Joe, for it was no other than that butt of 
 misfortune, he was mounted on a mare which had 
 the vice of kicking in no ordinary degree, and, as 
 some of the cuts designed for the rider fell upon 
 the beast's crupper, she resented them in kind, by 
 wheeling round and lashing out so vigorously, as 
 greatly to enlarge the circle of her acquaintance. 
 Favoured by this respite, Joe made shift to explain 
 that he was charged with what he called a life and 
 death letter to Sir Mark, at the same time holding 
 up the missive as conspicuously as he could, and 
 making a movement with his horse towards that 
 personage, who stood a little aloof. The Baronet, 
 however, who had heard the life and death charac- 
 ter of the note, conceived at once that the messen- 
 ger had come post from Dr. Bellamy, with a pro- 
 fessional remonstrance against over exertion and 
 fatigue, and a special prescription of home, absti- 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 25 
 
 nence, and fleecy hosiery. Affecting, therefore, 
 to be unconscious of his claim to the epistle, he 
 set off in a walk towards the copse, with a well- 
 feigned intentness on the movements of Jowler and 
 Grasper, who were visible at the skirt of the cover. 
 Hearing, however, the clatter of the post-horse 
 behind him, he put Bedlamite into a trot, Joe at 
 the same moment pricking his mare into a gallop ; 
 whereupon the wily fox-hunter, as if meaning 
 merely to give the mettle of his steed a fillip, 
 clapped spurs to his sides, and placed what he 
 thought an impracticable hedge between himself 
 and his pursuer. The postboy, however, was not 
 to be denied, for a guinea had been paid him be- 
 forehand for the service, and " money," says the 
 proverb, " makes the mare to go ;" but, doubly 
 urged by gold and steel, she could not, any more 
 than Joe, refuse the fence : they charged it together 
 gallantly, and the result was what the post-office 
 would call " a general delivery " of himself, mare, 
 letter, and all, at the feet of Bedlamite. The 
 sportsmanlike spirit of Sir Mark was not proof 
 against the thorough-going character of this feat, 
 voi. I. c 
 
^6 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 He immediately dismounted, picked up the letter^ 
 and broke the corer — the fox the next minute 
 doing the same thing. A halloo, a burst of canine 
 music, and a crash of timber instantly followed, 
 but, instead of riding at the head of the field, the 
 master of the hunt, to the utter surprise of the 
 whole company, was seen going his best pace in 
 the opposite direction. " By goles, Sir Mark is 
 making a queer cast of his oWn," exclaimed a far- 
 mer, the only pedestrian on the ground ; " it were 
 no runaway, for I seed un spur. I say, fellow," he 
 continued, addressing Joe, who was busily groping 
 about in a little hunt of his own amongst the fiirze 
 —" there must ha' been a terrible strong drag 
 'tother way, to draw a master of hounds off from 
 his fox when he were just found." 
 
 " You don't see nothing hereabouts as didn't 
 grow here, do you ? " inquired Joe, by way of 
 answer to the farmer* 
 
 " What may it be like, mun ? " inquired the 
 agiiculturist in his turn. 
 
 " It was as like a goold guinea as ever you see 
 in life," answered Joe, " afore it flew out o' my 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 27 
 
 jacket pocliet ; it's gone like conjuring ! I wish 
 1 had never been paid aforehand, but that's my 
 luck." 
 
 With this doleful reflection on fortune, her un- 
 happy victim, bruised in body and spirit, took the 
 bridle of the piebald mare, who, with streaming 
 knees, limped after him at a snail's pace to eluci- 
 date the meaning of " jump-short " * to her pro- 
 prietor, Master Jonas Hanway. 
 
 In the meantime, Sir Mark, with the reckless- 
 ness of a neck-or-nothing rider at a steeple -chase, 
 galloped as the crow flies directly across the Flats ; 
 and, clearing everything in his way, flung himself 
 off Bedlamite at the door of the Rabbits. The con- 
 siderate Mrs. Hanway, with the overflowing care- 
 
 * As some provincial dramatist may hereafter use this term, to the 
 great perplexity of commentators, it may be as well to say that the 
 author once heard the commodity enquired for in the shop of a 
 butcher at Upwell, in Norfolk, a vicinity abounding in fens, inter- 
 sected by broad ditches or drains, occasionally fatal to the sheep 
 who attempt to spring over them. The drowned mutton, under the 
 name of " jump-short,''' at a reduced price, was in request amongst 
 the poor. 
 
 C2 
 
28 TVLNEY HALL, 
 
 fulness which belonged to her character, had tied a 
 muffler of leather over the knocker of a door which 
 professionally stood ever open ; and Pots, undei" 
 the same direction, had scattered two trusses of 
 straw over a road where wheels were almost as 
 great a rarity as they are now-a-days in state lot- 
 teries. The Dutch clock in the tap -room no longer 
 struck the hour, and the parlour bell rang only 
 with the benumbed st)und of a wine-glass when it 
 is filled with liquid. The sign which had been so 
 given to ^olian discotd was taken down, and Jonas 
 himself, stt the desire of his spouse, had discarded 
 his iron-shod high-lows, and minced awkwardly 
 about in a pair of hst slippers. As for Mrs. Han- 
 way herself, she was quite in her element, invested 
 with all the importance and mystery of an attend- 
 ant on a sick chamber. Her face wore an unusual 
 expression of grave anxiety, varied however, oc- 
 ,casionally, by a slight crumpling up of her features, 
 which died away again with the flavour of the 
 vaiious medicines, which she amused herself by 
 sipping and tasting, preparatory to inflicting them 
 on her patient. Strange to say, the tenderest of 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 20 
 
 nurses seem to derive some peculiar gratification 
 from the administration of physic. With won- 
 derful gusto they shake up the nauseous sediment 
 full before the eyes of the loathing expectant. 
 With a very unnecessary noise and splash they 
 pour the gurgling abomination, close under the 
 olfactories, into the wine-glass or tea-cup, as if 
 jalap, like porter, would be more acceptable with 
 a fine head, and then gaze on the writhing features 
 and rising gorge with a complacency perfectly un- 
 accountable, except on that principle of Lucretius, 
 that it is pleasant to stand by and look on an 
 infliction which does not reach ourselves. 
 
 Mrs- Hanway, at the expense of her invalid, 
 had revelled for some time in this nursing j)ropen- 
 sity, till human patience, revolting at last, refused 
 peremptorily to honour her draughts ; and in con- 
 sequence she was compelled to find vent for her 
 ruling passion amongst knockers, bells, and thick 
 shoes, as already described. Above all she watched 
 for a noise as vigilantly as a cat for a mouse, and 
 whenever the most insignificant sound dared to be 
 laeard, she pounced upon it with her finger on her 
 
30 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 lips, and strangled it in its birth. Accordingly, the 
 moment Sir Mark alighted at the door, she put his 
 very first question asleep with an emphatic " hush !" 
 and then laying her lips to his ear favoured him 
 with an inaudible answer. Awed by this begin- 
 ning, the Baronet suffered himself, like one of the 
 deaf and dumb, to be telegraphed up stairs into 
 what is called the best bed-room, and coming 
 suddenly out of the broad light of day into a 
 gloom mitigated only by the slender ray which 
 crept through the mere cracks of the shutters, the 
 fire-light even being studiously screened off, he felt 
 for some bewildered moments as if blindness was 
 added to his other bereavements. At last a voice 
 which he could scarcely hear called him by name 
 to the bed-side, where a form he could barely see 
 clutched him feebly round the neck, and for some 
 time held him in a silent and tremulous embrace. 
 The voice again made an attempt to speak, when 
 suddenly the hands unclasped, and the body fell 
 back with a death-like helplessness on the pillow. 
 ' " He's dead, woman— he's dying !" shouted the 
 agitated Baronet; — "let me see the last of my 
 
TYLNEY HALL. :jl 
 
 brother !" and teaiing down a curtain with each 
 hand as he spoke, he endeavoured with fixed eyes 
 to pierce the thick gloom which hung before him. 
 In obedience to the command, Mrs. Hanway 
 opened one sohtary leaf of the shutters, but which 
 by chance allowed a partial stream of light to fall 
 full upon the bed, and disclosed a sight that ren- 
 dered the gazer almost as insensible as the being 
 before him. The letter he had received, the few 
 words of the invalid himself, had led Sir Mark to 
 believe that he was about to see a brother ; but 
 when he was able to distinguish the face of the 
 sufferer, he beheld with unspeakable horror tlie 
 countenance of his father, at whose death-bed he 
 had stood and wept some ten years before. 
 
32 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " This very doctor frankly owns that he does not cure the distempers 
 which are already formed, but only prevents their formation ; and the 
 medicine he prescribes is fasting upon fasting, until the patient is clean 
 skin and bone, as if a consumption was not worse than a fever." 
 
 Sancho Panza. 
 
 To account for the awful phenomenon recorded 
 in the last chapter, it may suffice to refer those who 
 have often looked on their kindred after death to 
 their own experience. Such persons, in gazing on 
 the rigid marble features of the departed, must 
 have been sometimes struck hy a startling likeness 
 of the corpse to some branch of consanguinity, 
 more or less remote, thus proving, by a resemblance 
 never recognisable during life, the fidelity of the 
 family mould. Attenuated, perhaps, by disease, 
 and further sharpened by the contractions of the 
 flesh and muscles after death, the features assume 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 33 
 
 an expression sometimes entirely different from 
 that of the same countenance when Uving, and the 
 spectator becomes unexpectedly aware, that former 
 dissimilarities in physiognomy arose merely from 
 the variances of flesh and fibre. The mortal change 
 moreover sometimes reduces the disparities of age, 
 making the old apparently younger, and the young 
 older — so that the father and son, mother and 
 daughter, appear in each other's likeness with an 
 identity perfectly astounding to the beholder. 
 
 The Baronet, therefore, only saw a countenance 
 on which care, an unwholesome climate, and pre- 
 mature old age, had anticipated the hand of death, 
 and worked out the resemblance which had given 
 such a shock to his feelings. To add to the ghast- 
 liness of the marble face of the invalid, each closed 
 eye was encircled by a deep tinge of livid blue, 
 the effects of a disproportionate dose of laudanum, 
 which the officious but well meaning Mrs. Han- 
 way had introduced over-night in his gruel. To 
 the infinite relief of Sir Mark, the sufferer, wlio 
 had merely fainted from over exertion and agitation, 
 shortly imclosed his eyes, and with returning ani- 
 
 c 3 
 
34 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 mation the likeness to his parent in some degree 
 faded away. To describe what followed, would 
 require a more graphic implement than the pen, 
 for much of the first communion between the bro- 
 thers consisted in embraces and mute tokens of 
 recognition — neither having command enough of 
 voice to discourse. The invalid was the first to 
 speak. 
 
 " I have brought home my bones at last," he 
 murmured, " though only to lay them in the family 
 vault." 
 
 " God forbid, Herbert," replied the worthy 
 Baronet, grasping somewhat too heartily the ema- 
 ciated hand that was held out to him. " But keep 
 up your heart, and you'll give the old enemy a 
 few winds and doubles afore then. Many a man's 
 been as low in flesh, and yet been got into condition, 
 by help of good keep and his native air. We'll 
 have you on your legs again by next grass." 
 
 " It will wave over me, Mark," returned the 
 other with a faint shake of the head, " and as for 
 my native air, it has shortened the few days I had 
 to live by its keenness and violence last night. 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 35 
 
 Lungs that have panted and decayed near the 
 tropics, will be ill able to encounter the cutting 
 blasts of an English winter." 
 
 " We'll have Dr. Bellamy to 'em," rejoined the 
 over-sanguine Baronet. " Whatever he may be at 
 gout, I'll back him for a known good hand at a 
 thickness o' the wind. I remember being a bit of 
 a high-blower myself, and as they said, by riding- 
 through Willow Brook, instead of going round by 
 the bridge — " 
 
 " If the gentleman's lungs is touched," inter- 
 rupted Mrs. Hanway, " there's nothin' worse than 
 talking and letting the air into 'em. It's what 
 Dr. Bellamy's most strict in ; and when his patients 
 is so unprudent as to ask what's the matter with 'em, 
 and what the medicine's meant to do — and if he has 
 met with the like case afore, and such like, he 
 never answers a single question. But thank good- 
 ness, here comes Dr. Bellamy to prescribe for 
 himself." 
 
 In fact a very unnecessary and prolonged double 
 knock at the door, which to a hypochondriac might 
 have suggested a funeral roll of a muffled drnrn. 
 
36 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 here announced the physician, whose foot, by no 
 means shod with felt, was soon heard ascending the 
 stairs, while a pompous voice in a tone far above a 
 whisper, maintained a running conversation with 
 some one at the stairfoot. We will venture a de- 
 scription of the disciple of Galen. At first sight 
 you were in doubt whether to set him down as a 
 doctor or a pedagogue, for his dress presented one 
 very characteristic appendage of the latter; namely, 
 a square-cut black coat, which never was, never 
 would be, and probably never had been, in the 
 fashion. A profusion of cambric frill, huge silver 
 shoe-buckles, a snuff-box of the same metal, and a 
 gold headed cane, belonged rather to the costume 
 of a physician of the period. He wore a very pre- 
 cise wig of a very decided brown, regularly crisped 
 at the top like a bunch of endive, and in front 
 following the exact curves of the arches of two 
 bushy eyebrows. He had dark eyes, a prominent 
 nose, and a wide mouth, the corners of which, in 
 smiling, were drawn downward towards his double 
 chin. A florid colour on his face hinted a plethoric 
 habit, while q. portly body and a very short thick 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 87 
 
 neck bespoke an apoplectic tendency. Warned 
 by these indications, prudence had made him a 
 strict water-drinker, and abstemious in his diet — a 
 mode of treatment which he appHed to all his 
 patients, short or tall, stout or thin, with whom, 
 whatever their disease, he invariably began by 
 reducing them, as an arithmetician would say, to 
 their lowest teiins. This mode of treatment raised 
 him so much in the estimation of the parochial 
 authorities, that, with their usual economical ten- 
 derness towards the poor rates, except when vestry 
 dinners were concerned, they unanimously conferred 
 on him the appointment of parish doctor, under a 
 well-grounded conviction that, in his dietetic pre- 
 scriptions, he would never over-pamper the pauper 
 bodies confided to his care. His deportment was 
 characterised by a profusion of ceremonious bows, 
 and set complimentary phrases, boiTowed, probably, 
 from some antiquated code of manners that he had 
 studied in his youth, and which he delivered with 
 such pomp of emphasis and set solemnity of face, 
 that the dignified title of Dr. Bellamy invaiiably 
 degenerated, behind his back, into the more popular 
 
38: TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 alias of Old Formality. Such was the personage 
 now introduced to the sick chamber, where he stood 
 bowing profoundly to Sir Mark, whom he was 
 somewhat surprised to see on his feet. 
 
 " Egad, Doctor,"" exclaimed the Baronet, " you 
 have hunted me down at last, though how you hit 
 upon the foil — ''"' 
 
 " I had the pleasure," said the Doctor, " of see- 
 ing Bedlamite at the door ;''' and the animal, if he 
 had been present, would doubtless have come in 
 for a congee. 
 
 " Sir Mark, we must get you home instantly, 
 and put you to bed. What further measures may 
 be necessary to expel the gout from your sto- 
 mach "" 
 
 " Expel the devil," said Sir Mark, in a vehement 
 whisper, " Fm as well as ever I was in my life. 
 YouVe oveiTun the scent, man, — your patient 
 Doctor, lies yonder." 
 
 " I beg a thousand pardons," said " Old For- 
 mality," bowing afresh to the dimity furniture of 
 the bed, from which the voice of the invalid was 
 heard. 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 39 
 
 " Mark, if you love me, give the worthy Doctor 
 no trouble on ray behalf: I am past human help. 
 I have prayed but to live for one purpose, which is 
 all but accomplished — send for my son." 
 
 At this moment the gruff voice of Jonas Hanway 
 was heard in altercation with that of a boy, accom- 
 panied with a sound of scuffling, which approached 
 nearer and nearer to the room, till eventually the 
 door was flung open, and a youth darting suddenly 
 m, cast himself on the bed by the side of the 
 invalid. For a few minutes there was a dead 
 pause broken only by the sobbings of the in- 
 truder, whom the parent endeavom'ed to compose 
 from time to time by a feeble caress. Sir Mark in 
 the meantime, seated himself on the other side of 
 the bed, and grasped the left hand of the boy, who 
 his heart told him was his nephew. 
 
 " I know, brother, what you mean," said the 
 warm hearted Baronet, " he shall be as a son of 
 my own — he shall be all one with Ringwood and 
 llaby ; he shall be as one of own — he shall, by 
 G — ! "' The invalid made no reply, but by raising 
 himself on his elbow towaids the speaker, and for 
 
40 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 a minute the two brothers seemed to look into 
 each other's soul. At last a languid smile passed 
 over the features of the younger, and with a faint 
 nod of acknowledgment he composed himself 
 again on the pillow, where his eyes closed and his 
 lips moved, as if in mental thanksgiving. 
 
 The scene was of such interest, that Dr. Bel- 
 lamy and Mrs. Hanway, the only persons present 
 who had " the gift of tongues," were subdued into 
 silence ; at last the respiration of the invalid was 
 only indicated by the feeble and iiTegular heaving 
 of the bed clothes. 
 
 " Thanks be to Providence," said Mrs. Hanway, 
 " he is composing himself to sleep ; we must trust 
 him awile to nature, and he shall have something 
 composing as soon as he wakes." 
 
 " 1 shall have the pleasure of sending a sopo- 
 rific," said the Doctor, " as soon as I get home." 
 
 " And he shall take it," added Mrs. Hanway, 
 " if I wake him up on purpose." 
 
 Sir Mark, whose plain common sense had de- 
 tected the approaches of sleep, in the meantime 
 drew the boy by gentle violence from the bed. 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 41 
 
 and led him from the room, followed by Dr. 
 Bellamy, leaving Mrs. Hanway, nothing loth, in 
 charge of the sick chamber. 
 
 As they descended the stairs, the Baronet, in a 
 melancholy tone, addressed the Doctor. 
 
 " I am afraid. Doctor, you have come up too late 
 to stop the earth my poor brother is going to." 
 
 " I have the honour of entirely coinciding with 
 your opinion," returned the obsequious physician. 
 "It is evident the patient has enjoyed a plethoric 
 habit, inducing diversion of the gastric juices, 
 derangement of the whole nervous functions, at- 
 tended mth febrile symptoms, decay of the vital 
 energies, and all the other concomitants of a dis- 
 organised constitutional system. Palliatives, Sir 
 Mark, — palliatives are all we can administer. In 
 the course of an hour I will again pay my respects 
 to the case, and ad interim I shall have the honour 
 of exhibiting a few grains of opium in the piUular 
 form." With these words he took up a huge 
 quaker-like hat, and making a ceremonious bow, 
 intimated to the Baronet that he had " the pleasure 
 of bidding him good moniing." 
 
i% TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " Some of these second-sighted persons will pretend to see a funeral, 
 and bespeak the death of the individual who is shortly to occupy a 
 hearse." 
 
 Tour in the Highlands. 
 
 " Asking your honour's pardon," said Jonas, 
 meeting the Baronet at the door of the parlour, 
 ^' the young gentleman's coming up was no fault 
 of mine. Mrs. Hanway thinks people as is to 
 part for ever had better be separated, and I had 
 him confined to the bar, but he begged so to see 
 his papa afore he died, that I hadn't the heart to 
 refuse him, and particularly as he kicked and bit 
 quite astonishin' for his age-^please to walk this 
 way," he continued, waving one hand towards the 
 parlour ; " as the whist club is apt to get noisy, 
 and sick people don't agree with loud singing, I 
 have got 'em to dissolve themselves for a week." 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 43 
 
 ** I'll make it all up to you, Jonas," said the Bai'o- 
 net " whist club and all. As for the boy, he 
 may stay with us. ^^Vhy as I live," he exclaimed, 
 examining for the firet time the face of his nephew, 
 " he's of a cross breed, he's as brown as Gipsey 
 Jack !" The boy thus referred to instantly plucked 
 his hand from the Baronet's, and with a quick 
 movement of rest utment turned away a face in 
 which red had now the mastery, while his eyes 
 glistened almost fiercely through the springing 
 tears. 
 
 " Come, come," said Sir Mark, laying his broad 
 hand with an eiuouraging slap, but which might 
 have served for a corrective one, on the youth's 
 shoulder ; " what I said about the skin was only 
 for the sake of giving tongue — a good horse can't 
 be of a bad colour." 
 
 " The best i ever set behind was a brown 
 one," remarked Jonas, " let alone a fault in his 
 temper." 
 
 This unlucky illustration, though adduced in per- 
 fect innocence by the ex-coachman of SirTheodorf 
 Bowles, was taken as a pointed allusion by the im- 
 
44 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 petuous Creole, who instantly discharged the first 
 object at hand at the astonished utterer. The 
 missile happened to be the old fashioned domino 
 box of the Whist Club. But passion had mis- 
 directed the aim, and its violence fell on " Unlucky 
 Joe," who at that moment entered the club -room 
 to break the broken knees of the piebald mare to 
 the publican. The narrative, however, died still- 
 bom, for the box struck him full in the mouth, the 
 shock scattering the whole stock of bony counters, 
 like a shower of loosened teeth. The poor pos- 
 tiUion instantly clapped both his hands to his mouth, 
 and for some minutes seemed to be suffering under 
 the operation of some wheelwright who had under- 
 taken the part of Cartwright at a- short notice. 
 
 " It's ruffinly usage, so it is," he exclaimed as 
 soon as he could speak, " and it's what nobody but 
 me would have taken quietly ; when accidents hap- 
 pen, as I'm too poor to stand the damage, it's 
 always took out in kicks. I was goin' to ax pardon 
 about the mare, but now Master Hanway we're 
 quits." At the mention of this, Jonas bolted off the 
 nearest way to the stable. In the meantime the 
 
TYLTsEY HALL. 45 
 
 Bai'otiet recognised the features of the sporting 
 post-boy who had hedged off the piebald mare 
 at Windmill Grange. 
 
 " If I recollect right my lad, I owe ye a trifle for 
 postage, and something besides for my nephew's 
 mishap with the box of dominoes, for it was no shot 
 of Jonas's ; but I must give it you some other time," 
 he added, thrusting first one hand and then the 
 other into the pockets of his buckskins, but which, 
 in his haste to escape from Dr* Bellamy, he had 
 forgotten to furnish. 
 
 " It's like my luck all over," muttered the fatalist 
 to himself, as he left the room, " my misfortunes is 
 paid down on the nail ; but for a bit of a Godsend, 
 I'm obliged to give tick." 
 
 The Bai'onet thus left to the company of a sul- 
 len boy, ^^^th whom he did not care to make the 
 first advance towards conversation, looked round 
 the room for something to divert his thoughts with, 
 but after a vain search was compelled to give him- 
 self up to his own cogitations ; he had just taken 
 one elbow chair and lifted his legs upon another, 
 when through the parlour door, which remained 
 
46 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 open, he saw Jonas re-enter and pass towards the 
 bai', followed by a little dapper rosy-faced man in 
 black; a jingling of glass ensued, and then an au-* 
 dible smack of the lips, in token of the relish of 
 the libation. To the dialogue which followed, the 
 Baronet became unavoidably a listener. 
 
 " It's capital, Master Hanway, capital 1 worth a 
 whole pint of the poor stuff at the Bell." 
 
 " I have it straight from the distiller's, Master 
 Naylor ; when one wants good unadulterated liquor, 
 there's nothing like going to the fotmtain-head." 
 
 " Aye, aye. Master Hanway, but at the Bell, you 
 know what I mean, they're apt to go to the foun- 
 tain head rather too much. Spirits, as I says some- 
 times to a taker- on, spirits won't bear too much 
 lowering. The society's very grumpy about it, I 
 assure you ; very grumpy indeed." 
 
 " That's to say, the society for people as want to 
 be buried .?" enquired the voice of the landlord. 
 
 " The very same, Master Hanway, and though I 
 say it, as should'nt say it, being president of the 
 club, as snug and merry a little free and easy as 
 you'd wish to be intened by. Only two guineas a 
 
TYLNEV HALL. 47 
 
 year, including mutes, bearers, feathers, and the 
 best pall, with every thing agreeable. You couldn't 
 bury yoiu'self for the money. The Uquors is but 
 so so, as I have said before, but the Bell mayn't 
 always be our funeral bell, as we call it by way of 
 a joke. There's more houses to meet at in the 
 place, and as I told the landlord t'other day, we're 
 not screwed down." 
 
 " I've heard the Black Horse very well spoke of," 
 remarked the disintereste d host of the Rabbits. 
 
 " No, no. Master Han way, we've black horses 
 enough of our own. But that's by way of a joke. 
 However, as I said before, the Bell don't answer, 
 and as I says to the members, if so be we are to 
 shift our tressels, we may as well pitch them again 
 among friends. Now there's my old neighbour and 
 crony Dick Tablet belongs to a society, and for old 
 acquaintance sake I should prefer to club our clubs 
 together at the same sign." 
 
 " And that's the very sign you're now drinking 
 at," rejoined the voice of honest Jonas with some 
 eagerness. " The Whist Club and the Rabbits has 
 pulled together these fifteen years, and I make bold 
 
48 TYLNEY HALL* 
 
 to hope will keep step for as many more to come. 
 For, as Master Tablet says jokingly, every Friday, 
 as long as I don't shuffle 'em, they'll never cut me." 
 
 " They'd never better themselves if they did, 
 Master Hanway ; the liquors at this house is capital, 
 if they are like the Cogniac. And then as to the 
 extensive prospect, as I said before, the Bell's a fool 
 to it. By-the-by, talking of prospects, what a won- 
 derful pleasant look out you must have. Master 
 Hanway, from the windows of your best bed-room." 
 
 " Pretty enough in summer, Master Naylor, 
 when there's any grass and a few lean beasts upon 
 the Flats. But it's a melancholy prospect for him as 
 now lies there with his last shutters shut." 
 
 " I never observed 'em, Master Hanway, never, 
 upon my word, or it wouldn't have become me to 
 stand here saying things by the way of joke, and a 
 change expected in the house. But such is om* 
 memento moris in this world. Here am I, as we 
 may say, in the vanity and pride of life, and a 
 Baronet's brother dying by inches over my head." 
 
 " It's no slow work. Master Naylor, it's next thing 
 to sudden death. His consumption, as Mrs. H 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 49 
 
 says, has broke into a gallop, and he'll go down 
 like a shot. Old Formality, Dr. Bellamy that is to 
 say, has just timed him, and says his last stage will 
 be done within the hour." 
 
 " We're cut ojQT, Master Hanway, like the flowers 
 of the field. Here to-day — gone to-moiTow — all 
 flesh is gi'ass. It's what we must all come to. Our 
 breatli was given to be took away again. Such is 
 the common lot. We're all mortal, no one can call 
 to-morrow his own, but death must pay the debt of 
 nature. Dust we are and to dust we must return. 
 Such being the case. Master Hanway, delicacy in 
 course forbids introducing the burial society into the 
 house till after the obsequies. In the meantime you 
 will oblige by presenting my dutiful inquiries to 
 Sir Mark, or may be by sticking my card up on 
 the mantelpiece, or in the fi'ame of the looking 
 glass, or any where prominent where sure to be seen. 
 It will be a hearse and six, and a lead coflin in 
 course, as before. I had the pleasure of performing 
 to the late Baronet." 
 
 " I'll cram your undertaking card down your 
 owa. d d throat, and perform your own body toi 
 
 VOL. I. D 
 
50 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 the horsepond," thundered a voice from the parlour, 
 and the sentence had hardly been passed when the 
 culprit found himself in the hands of the execu- 
 tioner. " ArVt you ashamed," he continued, " to 
 stand croaking over a fellow creature as if he was 
 sa. much carrion ? " And a shake accompanied 
 the words that threatened to divest the human 
 raven of his dingy plumage, and at the same time 
 shivered the first word of his apology into a 
 demi-semi-quaver. To render the finale more 
 operatic, the quavering ended by the violent 
 bolting out of a lower note, followed by a melo- 
 dratnatic stagger of the performer, the whole length 
 of the passage ; concluding, as the pantomime 
 always comes last, with a clown-like plunge of his 
 head into the stomach of Master Tablet, whom fate 
 had just brought to the door, with his own card 
 of " obliging inquiries." 
 
 " Gog's nouns ! Master Naylor," exclaimed the 
 stonemason, as he recovered his breath and equi- 
 librium, " it's early hours of the day, for a man to 
 be losing his legs." Another moment however 
 suiRced to convince him that the undertaker was 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 81 
 
 quite able to walk, and with some celerity. A 
 whisper from Jonas, with a side glance at Sir Mark, 
 speedily explained the mystery, whereupon Master 
 Tablet instantly faced about, without calling for 
 his morning draught, and left the Rabbits as though 
 it had been a whist night, without playing a card. 
 For another twenty minutes, the Baronet was left 
 in the parlour to his own companionship, his 
 nephew having taken advantage of the fracas to 
 escape up stairs to the chamber door, where he lay 
 couchant like a leopard. At last the usual noise 
 announced the return of Dr. Bellamy, whose pre- 
 sence for the frrst time was welcomed by Sir Maik 
 as a thing to be desired. While the worthy 
 Doctor, with a deliberation peculiarly appropriate 
 to the place and the occasion, divests himself of 
 his broad brimmed hat, and his gloves, his spatter- 
 dashes, his riding coat and his comforter, we will 
 take the liberty of presenting a case of one of the 
 most curious phenomena in the mysterious world 
 of dreams. 
 
 Contrary to the received opinion, that sleep, as 
 a mirror, reflects back merely the predominant 
 
 d2 
 
 uSlT^OFlLUNO^S 
 
52 T\XNEY HALL. 
 
 images of the waking mind — ^it more frequently 
 happens that the imagination, released from the 
 control of the external senses, flies with a truant 
 spirit, to scenes and deeds as remote as possible 
 from those of its daily bondage. The night cap is 
 its cap of liberty. On this principle the felon in 
 the condemned cell — during that awful season, 
 when, contrary to the calendar of time, the shortest 
 night and the longest are mthin a few hours of 
 each other — instead of erecting visionary scaffolds, 
 haunted by a horrible phantasmagoria of the de- 
 mons of crime and remorse, instead of withering 
 under fiend-like impersonations of shame, terror, 
 scorn, and human vengeance, he wanders through 
 woods dear to boyhood, or angles placidly in some 
 well-remembered stream, with thoughts as pure 
 and calm as its lucid waters. Even thus, in lieu 
 of dallying " with graves, and worms, and epitaphs," 
 the discursive faricy of the sleeping invalid mounted 
 with him like the pilgrim's vision from " the Valley 
 of the Shadow of Death," to the Delectable Moun- 
 tains of health, youth, and vigour. He was again a 
 gallant soldier, bounding over the field of glory on 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 53 
 
 a war-horse, gifted with an elasticity and power 
 exalted, by the soaring phantasy, to a pitch some- 
 what supernatural. Anon " a change came o'er 
 the spirit of his dream : " he was disgi'aced for some 
 undefined crime, and fallen under the extreme 
 sentence of a court-martial. The troops were drawn 
 up, the sentence was read, the firing party took 
 their station, the command was given, the volley 
 roared, and the victim awoke — the rattle of the 
 musketry, by a marvellous phenomenon in dream- 
 ing, coinciding exactly with the thundering double- 
 knock of the physician. 
 
 The Doctor, followed by Su- Mark, had accord- 
 ingly reached only the middle of the stairs, when 
 he was met by Mrs. Hanway, who, with a self- 
 complacent smile, informed him that the patient 
 "had woke agin quite charmin', and had himself 
 expressed that a change had taken place for the 
 better." 
 
 " I am proud to say I expected as much," re- 
 phed Old Formahty ; '* and the efficacy of the pills 
 I have had the honour to prescribe," he added, 
 bowing to Sir Mai'k, " affords me, in tliis case, a 
 peculiar gi'atification." 
 
54 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 At the mention of pills Mrs. Hanway uplifted 
 her hands and eyes mth a significant expression, 
 which, luckily for the Doctor, escaped his notice. 
 Little, indeed, did he dream that the Mercury of 
 medicine had encountered, in a by-road, a junior 
 messenger of the Post Office, as much disposed for 
 a little relaxation as himself, and that the pills in 
 question had been driven out of the ring of me- 
 mory by those heavier marble boluses which, in 
 the schoolboy's vocabulary, are called alleys and 
 taws. 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 55 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " In a fortnight, or three weeks,'' added my Uncle Toby, smiling, 
 
 " he might march." 
 
 Tristram Shandy. 
 
 On entering the sick chamber the visiters found 
 an alteration in the appearance of the patient, that 
 seemed fully to justify Mrs. Han way's bulletin ; 
 his cough had entirely ceased, there was a slight 
 tinge of red on his cheek, and his eyes sparkled 
 even lustrously, as if life, by a successful rally at 
 the very close of the mortal contest, had obtained 
 an unexpected victory. He was sitting up in bed, 
 supported by pillows, one hand in the possession 
 of his son, who covered it with kisses, the other 
 was taken without opposition by Dr. Bellamy, 
 who applied himself with great ceremony to the 
 pulse, and after a solemn pause of two minutes lie 
 intimated, by a smirk and a nod to Sir Mark, tliaf 
 the verdict was favourable. 
 
56 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 " God be praised," ejaculated the Baronet. 
 " Egad, Doctor, let me alone for a judge. I told 
 you he was full of running. Herbert, my boy," 
 he continued, grasping the hand which Old For- 
 mahty had resigned, " how d'ye find yourself? " 
 
 " Better, Mark — better, beyond conception. I 
 feel a lightness and freedom from suffering, such as 
 I have not experienced for many a long day." 
 
 " Hark to him, Doctor," cried the delighted Sir 
 Mark ; " hark to Herbert ! he's twice the voice he 
 had in the morning. He's got his second wind. 
 He'll give old boney the slip — he will by Jove :" 
 and his rising exultation outstripping his powers 
 of eloquence, he vented his hilarity in a way as 
 natural to him as breathing, namely, by a subdued 
 but triumphant yoicks [ 
 
 '' My narcotic pills have done wonders most 
 assuredly," replied the Doctor, " though at the 
 same time I must confess myself under some obli- 
 gation to the excellence of the constitution I have 
 had the honour to assist ;" and the bed again 
 received a bow worthy of that old school of manners 
 which polished Sir Charles Grandison. 
 
TYLNEY KALL. 57 
 
 " With the Doctor*s permission, Mark, I will be 
 moved up to the Hall to-morrow — I feel quite equal 
 to the exertion, indeed, if it were necessary, I should 
 not hesitate to undertake the removal this evening ? " 
 
 " With all deference, Sir, to your own feeling 
 of ability — which I beg leave to say I do not at 
 all dubitate in the least — yet in the responsible 
 character of a medical adviser I feel called upon 
 to decline forming a decided opinion for the pre- 
 sent. In the evening I shall again pay my re- 
 spects to the disease, and in the meantime, we will 
 prescribe a febrifuge, which I shall be infinitely 
 obliged by your taking every half hour ; with 
 regai'd to dietetics, I will instruct the good woman 
 of the house — Mr. Herbert TyiTel, I am your 
 most obedient — Sir Mark, 1 am your very de- 
 voted." Two twin bows followed, and the phy- 
 sician again descended the stairs with the noise 
 peculiai' to persons of his stamp. Mrs. Hanway 
 interrupted him at the bottom, and had ample time 
 to receive her instructions, while helping him on 
 with his very complicated defences against weather. 
 "No sohds, Mrs. Hanway, nor much Uquid — 
 
 d3 
 
58 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 and, above all, no stimulants ;" was the summary 
 of the charge. 
 
 " Not for the world, Doctor," exclaimed Mrs. 
 Hanway, "we've no stimulus in the house," so 
 saying she dropped a low curtsey and returned 
 to the bar to complete the beating up of the yolks 
 of two eggs with a large bumper of port. 
 
 The Doctor on his cob, a sort of roan com- 
 pounded of rhubarb and magnesia, and which 
 neither galloped, trotted, nor cantered, but had a 
 pace of its own made up of all three, had barely 
 cleared a quarter of a mile when ihe voice of Sir 
 Mark was heard overhead shouting — " Stop him ! 
 for God's sake head him back— halloo to Dr. Bel- 
 lamy l" But the Doctor, muffled up all but the 
 peak of his nose, w^as already far beyond the reach 
 of lungs more stentorian than those of Mrs. Han- 
 way. She however gave three heron-like screams 
 to the desert air of the Flats, and, according to her 
 own motto of "be prepared for the worst," she 
 Tushed up stairs, armed with a bunch of feathers 
 and a phial of sal volatile. The patient, however, 
 when she entered the room seemed beyond her 
 
XYLNEY HALL. 59 
 
 aid: he was lying on his back, his hands firmly 
 clenched till the knuckles started out like marbles, 
 his eyelids closed together forcibly within a deep 
 hollow, his cheeks sunk, while his lips were so 
 tensely drawn that the teeth appeared with a 
 ghastly prominence. It was indeed the very 
 aspect of a corpse, for though not dead, his fea- 
 tures had undergone that prophetic alteration 
 which is expressed by the popular phrase of 
 being " changed for death." The treacherous ap- 
 pearances which had so rejoiced Sir Mark, and 
 had deceived Dr. Bellamy himself, had originated 
 only in that transient elevation of spirits alluded 
 to by Romeo — 
 
 How oft when men are at the point of dealJi 
 Have they been merry ? which their keepers call 
 A lightning before death. 
 
 In such a case the sparkle of the eye is but as 
 the upflashing of an exphing taper ; and the rosy 
 forgery of health upon the cheek resembles only 
 those ruddy sunsets portending gloom and tears. 
 Thus the coi-poreal reaction became suddenly 
 evident by an alarming swoon, from which with 
 
60 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 great difficulty the sufferer was recovered. At 
 last he unclosed his eyes and gazed around him 
 as wildly as if they had opened on another world. 
 
 " Indiana," he exclaimed, rivetting two eager 
 orbs of a startling brilliancy on the face of the 
 horror-stricken Mrs. Hanway, " wherefore are you 
 here ? take her away — pull her off me, quick;" — • 
 and his arm waved impetuously. — " She has a knife !" 
 
 " His head is going," whispered Mrs. Hanway 
 to Sir Mark ; " it is time to send for the clergy." 
 
 " Remove the boy," continued the strong wild 
 voice of delirium ; " he must not see me bleed — his 
 mother did it." 
 
 " Ah, papa ! dear papa ! don't send me from you 
 — pray don't," sobbed the terrified boy, struggling 
 with all his might to retain the hand which the 
 invalid, with that fitful strength which belongs to 
 firenzy, disengaged by a single effort. 
 
 " Away, woman," he cried, " don't cling to me ; 
 away — out of my sight — we part for ever ! " 
 • A long pause of exhaustion succeeded, during 
 which his eyes gradually became duller, and when 
 he spoke again, it was with a tone so altered, so 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 61 
 
 feeble and mild, that it seemed as if two distinct 
 spirits with their several voices inhabited the same 
 body. 
 
 " I am going, Mark, going rapidly ; the grave 
 is closing round me — I am dead to the waist. 
 Come nearer, Mark — nearer still ;" the Baronet 
 placed his ear close to his brother's lips, and actu- 
 ally staggered backward as the appalling super- 
 natural voice, abruptly resumed, fell with full force 
 on the astounded sense. " Don't hurt her," it 
 shouted, " she's mad — mad with jealousy ! Indi- 
 ana, you had no cause for this !" and the intense 
 bright eyes again fixed themselves on the coun- 
 tenance of Mrs. Han way, who, in an agony ofun- 
 definable teiTor, sunk on her knees and shrouded 
 herself in the cm'tain. 
 
 " In the name of God, Herbert," said the be- 
 wdldered Sir Mark, " if you have any thing on your 
 mind make a clean breast of it. If it's about the 
 boy, I've sworn to back him through this world, 
 and while I live I'll ride with him round the 
 course." The invalid for a moment gazed on his 
 brother, as if without comprehending his words ; 
 
62 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 but the caresses and sobs of his son recalled a 
 spirit which seemed aheady hovering between 
 earth and heaven. 
 
 " He loves me as fondly as his mother did," 
 said the dying parent, with a voice again feeble 
 and tremulous ; " but his temper has some of her 
 tropical fire, which, as a last injunction, 1 conjure 
 his future father to repress." 
 
 " Make your mind easy, Herbert," said the 
 Baronet, " he's a mettlesome colt, I know, but I'll 
 drive him at the lower bar. I wish the Almighty 
 had pleased to leave the reins in your own hand ; 
 but his will must be done ; since our hopes are 
 come to this check, and we must part, all we can 
 do is to look forward to a better place. If you 
 would like to have the curate to ease your mind 
 
 "I feel no more misgivings," answered the 
 dying man, " than a Christian ought on the 
 brink of an unknown world. I have my hopes 
 and my fears — there are dark clouds and bright 
 clouds before me — and they both blind me 
 alike." His voice now sunk so sui^denly as to be 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 63 
 
 scarcely audible, but he made a sign to his child 
 and his brother, who stooped down to receive his 
 last embrace. " God bless — both," he whispered, 
 "Indiana — I forgive all — Walter, don't cry — we 
 shall soon— be— in England." The sound ceased 
 with a long-drawn sigh. The dying man fixed his 
 last look full upon Sir Mark, who, as he gazed on 
 the motionless eyes before him, saw the transit of 
 life as visibly as if a taper had been removed 
 suddenly from behind each window, so called in 
 Scripture, of the human soul. 
 
64 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 "Come, come — the pills! where are the pills? produce them!" 
 
 The Honetmoon. 
 
 As soon as the breath had left the body, Mrs. 
 Hanway made a sign to Sir Mark to withdraw his 
 nephew from the room, in order that the necessary 
 duties might be performed to the corpse. 
 
 " Poor Herbert, he is gone at last, and God rest 
 his soul !" he ejaculated, withdrawing his arm for 
 ever, and by an agonising effort, from under the 
 inanimate head, which seemed now to retain it 
 with a pressure of a ton of marble: "here am I 
 older and more deserving to be cut off than poor 
 Herbert — but the best always top the fence first 
 into the other world. Thank God," he continued, 
 taking the boy's hand into his own huge grasp, 
 " he died easy, and in his own country, where he 
 
TYLNEY HALL, 65 
 
 was roused, and his own friends in at his death, 
 instead of being run into in the West Indies among 
 a pack of heathens and blacks. But talking here 
 is out of place, when melancholy duties are waited 
 for ;" so saying, he drew his nephew with some 
 force from the bed, and led him down stairs to the 
 parlour, where he began preaching composure and 
 resignation to the weeping boy, in a discourse very 
 different from that of a commonplace funeral ser- 
 mon, but quite as worthy of publication. 
 
 " Come now,"" he said, " take heart a little, and 
 consider what must be must. Your poor father is 
 dead and gone, and now you must look up to me ; 
 if his run hasn't been as long as some, he has, 
 maybe, been saved a deal of distress and strug- 
 gUng on his last legs, and which is better than 
 seeing him wearing out by inches, and death hav- 
 ing him in view all the time. For my own part it 
 comforts me to think I have shook his last hands 
 and closed his last eyes, and shall be able to see 
 him go to earth as a Christian ought, in the old 
 family vault, with his own kith and kin. It seems 
 hard, no doubt, to part company with those that 
 
66 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 are so dear to us, but it's so with one and all, 
 whatever their pedigrees ; for if death didn't draft 
 off now and then out of all our breeds, the world 
 would be overstocked : that's the order of nature. 
 Such being the case, we should meet our nfiisfor- 
 tunes like men, instead of taking on and being 
 noisy and babbling in our griefs, as if that would 
 head him back again, and which is quite impos- 
 sible. To be always trying back with repinings 
 after what is lost and gone, is nothing but running 
 counter in the sight of the Almighty, and likely 
 to bring punishment on our backs for such a 
 course. To be sure, when my own sire died, I 
 gave tongue just as you do, and said I could not 
 live over it ; and yet here I am, rising fifty -four if 
 I'm a day, and able to ride up to any hounds in the 
 kingdom. As I said before, we must all die some 
 day or other, and in consequence either we must 
 all lose our fathers or our fathers must lose us, and 
 Providence has wisely ordained th^t they should 
 generally go first." 
 
 In this practical style of consolation the worthy 
 Baronet continued for some time longiQr, till coming 
 
TYLNEY HALL. ^7 
 
 to a check, as he would have called it, from his 
 words having overridden his ideas, he was com- 
 pelled to hold hard, when he discovered that his 
 nephew, overcome by grief, watching, and exer- 
 tion, had fallen through mere exhaustion into a 
 profound sleep. Taking advantage of the circum- 
 stance. Sir Mark stole away to the bar, and gave 
 an order which brought Jonas's neat postchaise 
 from ordinaiy into commission. By substituting a 
 bluejacket for a brown one, doffing a white apron, 
 and changing a pair of slip-slop shoes for top- 
 boots, in about twenty minutes Pots, like an ana- 
 gram, was transposed into Post, and sprung his 
 four-wheeled rattle at the door. The youth, still 
 sleeping, was lifted into the vehicle, the Baronet 
 followed, after a few instructions to Jonas, and 
 thrusting his head out of the front window, gavt- 
 the whispered direction " to Tylney Hall." 
 
 Just as the chaise departed, the landlady de- 
 scended the stairs. " It's all over — it's all over, 
 Mr. Hanway," she exclaimed, entering the bar 
 somewhat hastily, and helping herself to a glass 
 of one of her own restoratives. " Poor gentleman," 
 
6& TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 said Jonas, " it's very sudden, but I said when I 
 saw him, he was going down hill without the drag 
 on ; with his sufferings it's a happy release." 
 
 " A happy release indeed," echoed a voice from 
 the kitchen, with a vehemence as if it enjoyed its 
 exaltation from the low whisper to which all the 
 tongues in the house had been subjected. " If it 
 wam't a sin to rejoice over another's latter-^nd 
 I'd say a good riddince. What with making up 
 slops, and broths, and gruels, and sagoes, and arrow- 
 roots, and panadas, for one as won't eat 'em, and 
 then having to live on 'em in the kitchen — for 
 missis won't have anythin' wasted, — well, I've 
 giv warnin' a hundred times, but now it shall be 
 in amest !" 
 
 To tell the truth, the speaker had but too much 
 reason for such complaints, for Mrs. Hanway was 
 one of those good managers who in modelling a 
 figurative statue of economy, are apt to make 
 both ends meet by allowing no waste. It is doubt- 
 ful, however, whether Betty the cook would have 
 ventured on such an audible statement of her 
 gi'ievances, if her courage had not been reinforced 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 69 
 
 by something more jDoteiit than barley-watet and 
 apple-tea. Forewarned by hints from up-stairs, 
 and signs quite as significant as death-watches, or 
 tallowy winding sheets, or coffins out of the fire, 
 she had ascertained that the sick gentleman would 
 soon be a dead one, and with the vulgar instinct 
 of selfishness, she immediately began to constitute 
 herself his residuary legatee. First she adminis- 
 tered to the old port that should have been beaten 
 up with the yolk of eggs ; secondly to the sherry 
 intended to flavour the calves foot jelly ; thirdly, 
 to the mountain provided for making a white wine 
 whey ; and then the Cogniac about to be burnt for 
 a stomachic. Fifthly, she gulped down the sal 
 volatile and water, which stood ready as a resto- 
 rative ; and finally, the ardent appetite increasing 
 by what it fed on, she swallowed even the spirits 
 of wine destined to be consumed with camphor, 
 by way of precaution against infection. Inflamed 
 by these various stimulants her mind began to 
 open, as an oyster does when subjected to unusual 
 heat; and out flew the diatribe against the poor 
 defunct gentleman, and his poor diet. 
 
70 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 The unlucky words reached a pair of quick ears 
 in the bar, and were not at all lost on the irritable 
 Mrs. Han way. She was in that peculiar mood to 
 which some tempers are liable after agitation and 
 excitement, when the nerves are still vibrating and 
 urging the possessor by way of vent to exertion or 
 violence, in short she laboured under a fit of what 
 is emphatically called the fidgets. Deposed suddenly 
 from the active situation of head nurse to a living 
 patient to the passive one of being custos of a 
 corpse, she wanted something whereon to expend 
 the surplus energies of mind and body ; accord- 
 ingly the obnoxious words were no sooner uttered 
 than she rushed into the kitchen, and planted her 
 face at bare toasting distance against the fiery visage 
 of the cook, who stood balancing on two legs, not 
 quite so steadily as a peg top does on one. 
 
 " Can I believe my ears," she asked in a vehement 
 whisper, intended to preserve the due decorum of a 
 house of mourning. — "Can I believe my own senses ! 
 — To dare to rejoice over a fellow creature's depart- 
 ure, and the corpse in the very house — I wonder, hus- 
 sey, your own latter end did not fly in your face !" 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 71 
 
 "What I've said I've said," answered the 
 cook doggedly, and I an't a going to eat my words 
 — no nor the sick messes and slops nayther, if it 
 comes to that. So if you mean. Ma'am, to hold me 
 to my wamin, you may Ma'am. As for my own 
 dyings, I only wonder I'm alive this blessed day, 
 so I do — w^hat with your quack doctering and nos- 
 teiTims. They've been the real ruin of my precious 
 health, that's what they have — the Lord forgive 
 you !" 
 
 " the wretch," ejaculated the indignant mistress, 
 " to have no more gratitude. — This comes of my 
 nursing, and proscribing you, and giving it with 
 my own hands — only last Christmas, and snatching 
 you back from death's door." 
 
 " Yes, Ma'am, — and well nigh chucked me in agen 
 at the window," returned Betty, " thro' giving me 
 so such cooling physic in the hard frosteses. My 
 own mother that bore me would not have knowed 
 such a bag of bones. Since I've been here I've 
 swallowed whole pecks of pills as if they was 
 nothing but green peas, and have took rubub enuff 
 
72 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 to turn me into a Turk. I can't bear it no more, 
 and so as I said before, if so be I'm to stay in the 
 place, the physic must be put on the same futting 
 as the tea and sugar — a guinea a year and find 
 myself." 
 
 " You have never taken anything in this house," 
 retorted Mrs. Hanway, " except for your good — 
 and when your system wanted lowering, and for 
 purifying the blood — and if you have been a little 
 reduced or so, haven't you had nourishing things 
 and all sorts of support, provided it was light and 
 easy of digesting ?" 
 
 " My disgesting. Ma'am, thank God, wants no such 
 lightening. I was noted from a child for a strong 
 stomach, only it can't abide weak slops. Sago and 
 sich is very well for the consumptions as lies in a 
 sick bed, and hasn't got a hard place ; but lawk 
 help you, what's their works to mine, coughing and 
 w^heezing is one thing, and frying beef steaks and 
 inguns is another. If it warn't for my strong con- 
 stitution, it's a miracle of miracles how I stand it — 
 what with roast, and biled, and fried afore a great 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 73 
 
 flaming fire, and in everlasting flun*ies and hurries, 
 now this here pot biles over, then that ere fat 
 ketches, and then the sut tumbles, and the dratted 
 oafs at the drippin pan— and is a little wishy 
 washy drop of barley water the thing to cool and 
 refresh one after the likes o' that — not that I'm 
 going, Ma'am, to complain of what I was bred and 
 bom to, but only to takin more slops, and especially 
 physic, than belongs to cookery, and my wages not 
 riz thereby — to be sure the bottles would be sum- 
 mut, but arter one is doctored to death, who's to 
 come to me up in heaven and say, there Betty, 
 there's the empty vials for your parquisites." 
 
 " Your perquisites indeed !" cried Mrs. Hanway, 
 waxing in wrath, " a pretty speech truly, it's high 
 time you left the Rabbits when you begin to talk 
 of perquisites — but you shant stay another night 
 in the house, no not an hour — perquisites indeed ! 
 I'll have you go this moment."" 
 
 " What this very moment Mam — this very divi- 
 dual moment, this moment as I'm speaking Mam ?" 
 
 " Ay, hussey, this very moment, and the sooner 
 the better." 
 
 VOL. I. E 
 
74 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 " Why there then — I takes your wamin, and 
 washes my hands o' my place " — and as she spoke, 
 the unruly ruler of the roast deliberately re- 
 laxed her ruddy fingers, letting fall from one hand a 
 saucepan of sago, and from the other a basin of ar- 
 row root, as dab and suddenly as Corporal Trim drop- 
 ped his hat to illustrate his discourse ujDon death. 
 Like the veteran she neither dashed them down, 
 nor flung them, nor pitched them, nor jerked 
 them, but let them go plump, as if apoplexy had 
 given her notice to quit instead of Mrs* Hanway. 
 The latter was not a woman to bear with wanton 
 breakage. In fact the Tartar, as of old, began to 
 rise on the ruin of China, but, luckily for the de- 
 voted cook, her friry was arrested by the appear- 
 ance of a boy laden with a basket in the front 
 passage; no other in fact, than the tardy walking 
 dispensary of Doctor Bellamy. 
 
 Doctors' boys, like chimney sweeps, universally 
 run very small, and Old Formality's urchin really 
 looked as stunted as if his board as well as his 
 wages had been derived from his master's shop. 
 Perched at a door in charge of the old-fashioned 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 75 
 
 covered chaise, he looked actually like a periwinkle 
 shrivelled in its shell. He had two little dark 
 bolus-looking eyes, set squintingly in a long, pale, 
 old face, in the middle of which stood a nose origi- 
 nally a pug, but made seemingly still pugger by 
 its habitual turn-up at the nauseous freight that he 
 commonly carried. His mouth had an appropriate 
 screw-up of its own, as if hinting that he considered 
 his place was to take out medicine, and not to take 
 it in, while a chin of disproportionate length rested 
 on a couple of linen dog-ears, which he called a 
 collar. As for his livery, it was of a very decided 
 blue, turned up with quite as decided a red, match- 
 ing exactly the very colours of the two glass globes 
 which by night glared over the Doctor's door — for 
 as yet the chemists had not compounded those 
 delicate tints, which in our days emulate the fashion- 
 able Parisian hues of eau de Nil, terre d'Egypte, 
 and flammes d'enfer. Small as the imp was, 
 however, his predecessor must have been smaller, 
 for his clothes did not fit — his sleeves hung as dis- 
 tant from his sides as if he held an imaginary 
 quartern loaf under each arm, and his knee breeches 
 
 E 2 
 
76 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 buttoned above his knee, his gaiters were an inch 
 too short, and his shoes were as much too long, but 
 were kept on by a hberal allowance of supplement- 
 ary tow thrust into each extremity. Nothing else 
 was big enough for him save his hat, which he 
 kept from extinguishing his eyes by wearing his 
 pocket handkerchief and two sheets of brown 
 paper in the crown, as well as letting it rest on the 
 collar of his coat behind, a collision which had 
 given a truly clerical turn to the back of the brim. 
 Gloves he had none, though, as far as appearance 
 went, he scarcely needed them, his hands looking 
 always too red or too blue to be taken for the 
 natural skin. 
 
 " If you please. Ma'am," said the dwarf, fumbling 
 out a small box from his basket, " if you please, 
 Ma'am, I've brought the sick gentleman's pills." 
 
 The wrath of Mrs. Hanway was at its climax. 
 Second only to the mortal sin which so horrified John 
 Bunyan, she reckoned the inexpiable crime of let- 
 ting a sick gentleman go to heaven without his 
 physic. With indignant hand she seized a fleshy 
 appendage, which, like a Corinthian volute, curled 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 77 
 
 downward from the brim of the culprit's hat, and 
 a caper instantly followed that strikingly proved 
 how much the style in dancing depends on the ear 
 of the performer. The step in this case was of a 
 May -day character, consisting of alternate hops on 
 each foot, pain and fiight in the mean time com- 
 peUing the dancer to let go his basket, which fell 
 with a hideous crash, followed by the powerful 
 aromas of squills and camphor, aether and assafce- 
 tida, while a flood of mingled hue meandered along 
 the floor, the acids and alkalies hissing at each 
 other like enraged serpents. 
 
 " In the name of mercy, woman," cried Jonas 
 from the bar, " what's the meaning of the uproar, 
 what's the matter ?" 
 
 " It's life and death's the matter," replied Mrs. 
 Hanway, finishing off her discipline with a smart 
 cuff on the ear, which made this real pill-garlic 
 conclude his pas seul with a pirouette. 
 
 " She ham't no right to ill-use me, that she 
 harn't," he bellowed, " she an't my mother." 
 
 " Let the poor fellow alone," cried Jonas ; " if 
 so be he runs restive, his own master can lay the 
 
78 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 whip into him a pretty deal smarter nor you 
 can." 
 
 " A little villain," retorted Mrs. Hanway, " is 
 people to go into the other world without their 
 pills — and all through such a little divil as 
 him ?" 
 
 "The gentleman's dead and gone," returned 
 Jonas, " and what signifies the pills — horse-balls 
 would'n't 'a saved him." 
 
 " And let me tell ye, Mr. Hanway," retorted 
 his spouse very sharply, "pills signifies a good 
 deal when human lives is hanging like spiders' upon 
 threads." 
 
 " That's true any how," said the unruffled Jonas, 
 " and I'm thinking how many human beings '11 be 
 cantering their last stages for want o' the draughts 
 and mixtures you've been upsetting of." 
 
 " I've been the upsetter of nothin' that can't be 
 made good again, thank God, nobody's deaths can 
 be laid at my door, — and I wish every other little 
 wicked vagabond could say as much, there's other 
 folks understands the matera medicus as well as 
 Old Formality." 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 79 
 
 " The matera medicus will be all stopped out o" 
 my wages," blubbered the boy, " and may be my 
 head pestled and mortared into the bargain. I 
 should like to know who's to find me any character 
 when I'm turned out, neck and crop, from Dr. 
 Bellamy's." 
 
 " To be sure it's only fair and reasonable," said 
 the considerate Jonas, " we should give the boy a 
 trifle towards the physical damage." 
 
 " I shall give no such fiddlesticks," said Mrs. 
 H anway very tartly, " the sick patients is all I 
 looks to ;" so saying she stooped down, and care- 
 fully gathered up the labels from the medicinal 
 wreck, the directions on which, she faithfully 
 copied and appended to as many fresh phials, that 
 she filled up with various draughts and mixtures 
 of her own compounding, to the infuiite relief of 
 the dwarf who thus saw an infallible remedy for 
 what had appeared a complication of incurable dis- 
 asters. Promising ic.^hfully to keep the secret, he 
 set out cheerfully to deliver the nostrums at their 
 respective destinations, and although one invalid 
 
80 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 had to take pennyroyal three times a day, instead 
 of sarsaparilla, and another had a draught of pepper- 
 mint in lieu of bark, while a third swallowed camo- 
 mile tea, in place of syrup of squills, — ^yet to the 
 credit of Mrs. Hanway's practice the patients did 
 neither better nor worse than if they had swal- 
 lowed the identical medicines originally pre- 
 scribed. 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 81 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 " A fine pickle he'll put the house into ; had he been master's own 
 son, and a Christian Englishman, there could not have been more 
 route than there is about this Creolian, as they call him." 
 
 The West Indiait. 
 
 About the same time that the doctor's boy de- 
 parted from the Rabbits with his fresh cargo^f 
 medicine, the post-chaise entered the avenue which 
 led to Tylney HeJI and was immediately descried 
 by the sharp grey eyes of Mrs. Deborah, the anti- 
 quated housekeeper. She instantly gave a cry, as 
 shrill and broken as that of an upright pencil hop- 
 ping across a slate, invoking the presence of, 
 " Jere-miah ! — Jere-miah ! — Je-re-miah !" She had 
 been naturally voluble, but a tryste as the Scotch 
 call it, which she had held too faithfully for a 
 
 E 3 
 
8^2 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 faithless swain, was said to have been the cause of 
 an affection of the lungs, that she now entertained 
 in lieu of an affection of the heart. Neglected 
 love had brought on a neglected cold, which had 
 terminated in an asthmatic shortness of breath, that 
 made strange havoc with her enunciation. As 
 well as printing can typify her defect, her soliloquy 
 ran thus : — 
 
 " Well as I hope — to be saved by gemini — its 
 gone to his stomach and a post-chaise is coming up 
 — the avenue he must be put to bed— that comes 
 of going off — without his ale and hung — beef run 
 up and warm the bed — Lord send him well thi-ough 
 it — don't forget to put the kettle on his feet— as 
 usual must be bathed with a sack posset — God 
 be praised sir — " she panted as the chaise drew 
 up, " at seeing your honour— safe between me and 
 Dr. Bellamy — we may keep your legs from going 
 to your inside." 
 
 " You're running breast-high after a red her- 
 ring," said the Baronet through the window, to the 
 astonished Mistress Deborah, whose literal mind 
 took the scampering after a Yarmouth bloater in 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 83 
 
 good earnest, and made her have a misgiving, that 
 the gout had flown into her master's head. 
 
 "You're running breast-high, after a red her- 
 ring," he repeated, " and must be whipped off. As 
 for gout you may draw every cover I have in my 
 inside and it will be a blank day after all, — but 
 that's neither here nor there. As far as hunting 
 goes I haven't had a single burst, let alone from 
 Windmills Grange to the Rabbits, and then only 
 to be in at the death of my own dear brother. 
 You didn't kill him Dick, did ye ? " he continued, 
 abruptly addressing his huntsman, who presented 
 an aim on one side of the chaise door. 
 
 " I'm d — d if we didn't," answered Dick, " and 
 in forty minutes — he was chopt in a fuz." 
 
 " And this is his son," said Sir Mark, turning 
 again to the housekeeper and pointing to the Creole 
 as he ahghted. 
 
 "As like Mr. Herbert," panted Deborah, "as 
 two peas biled — in the same pot with his very nose 
 — his eyes are exactly like his mouth — and his 
 chin — and every other feature— he's bro^mish to 
 be sure and the Tyrrels— is all fair — but a leetlc 
 
84 TYLNEY HALL, 
 
 milk of roses — will remove a ship and a sea voy- 
 age — is apt to tan." 
 
 The brovrn face of the Creole at this speech 
 assumed a tinge of scarlet, like poppies springing 
 amongst ripe com, but he contented himself with 
 looking a box of dominoes at the housekeeper, and 
 passed into the Hall. 
 
 " And now welcome to Tylney Hall," said the 
 
 Baronet, taking and shaking his nephew's hand 
 
 very heartily, " your home that is to be, you shall 
 
 have a room of your own and a nag of your own, 
 
 like Ringwood and Raby. Little Spitfire would 
 
 be the very thing to carry you — and as to the 
 
 dogs, you shall have any one you like, and the 
 
 little single gun, provided you don't shoot the 
 
 birds out of season. As Deborah says, you're the 
 
 very image of my poor brother Herbert ; and Til 
 
 be a father to you for his sake ; so you musn't fret 
 
 and take on so, or you'll fall off in your feed and 
 
 get out of condition, and may be go after him 
 
 yourself, and it's our duty in such a case to hold 
 
 hard in time. But the boys will put you in heart 
 
 better than I can. If you're for hunting or shoot- 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 85 
 
 ing — 1 mean after the funeml — you'll find Ring- 
 wood as up to every thing, as Nimrod; and if 
 you're bookish, there's Raby knows every volume 
 in the library inside and out, and can tell you the 
 performances of any author you like. I wish he 
 could ride as well as he reads ; but I've remarked 
 through Hfe, that sedentary people never have a 
 good seat. Now your poor father's gone, we 
 must comfort ourselves by thinking of his straight- 
 going principle through life, and trust you will 
 follow in his line without skirting. And Deborah 
 shaU send up the tray, for we musn't forget 
 nature's wants, and to my knowledge you haven't 
 been to rack or manger the whole morning." By 
 this time they had arrived at the dining-room, 
 where the table had been aheady furnished, through 
 the care of Mrs. Deborah, with a cold refection, in 
 anticipation of some dozen guests, literally as 
 hungry as hunters. The Creole, however, dechned 
 eveiy thing that was offered, declaring that he felt 
 neither hunger nor thirst. 
 
 *' Come, come, my lad," said the good-natured 
 Baronet, putting a cold pigeon on his nephew's 
 
86 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 plate, " supposing your poor father to be looking 
 down from above at this moment he wouldn't object 
 to our taking our meals. To be sure some animals 
 when they lose their mates or their dams will waste 
 and pine away, but then they're brute beasts and 
 know no better : but for Christians to starve them- 
 selves to death on account of the dead is flying in 
 the face of the Bible. It's an opinion of mine that 
 nature is nature, and if a man is not properly sen- 
 sible of hunger and thirst he can't be sensible of 
 sorrow, or grief, or anything else in the way of 
 feelings. For my own part I think grieving is 
 very apt to go to the stomach, for I remember I 
 never felt so sharp-set in my life as at my uncle 
 Raby's funeral, what with the very slow pace and 
 the north-east wind, and not knowing whether it 
 would be decorum to have the coach windows up," 
 so saying, Sir Mark stuck his fork into a cold capon 
 and was just beginning to illustrate his precept by 
 practice, when Ringwood and Raby entered the 
 room. They were both fine boys of thirteen and 
 fourteen years of age, but considerably differing 
 from each other in person and features. Ringwood 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 87 
 
 was tall, robust, and florid, with curling brown 
 
 hair and full bold-looking dai'k eyes. He had a 
 
 frank open manner, laughed often, talked much 
 
 with a loud but pleasant voice. The complexion 
 
 of Raby, the youngest, was pale, except when he 
 
 was excited, and then his face flushed all over 
 
 like a girl's, and his dai'k hazel eyes flashed and 
 
 sparkled through their long lashes. There was 
 
 nothing of sickliness, however, in the appearance ; 
 
 his skin was clear and transparent, the flesh firm, 
 
 the lips fi'esh coloured, possibly the blackness of 
 
 his hair made him look pale, though, in reality, he 
 
 was merely fair. He was as well made as his 
 
 brother, but slighter in figTire, and he had a dash 
 
 of reserve in his address, and a voice rather gentle 
 
 and low that accorded with his own pursuits and 
 
 amusements, which were of a nature somewhat less 
 
 boisterous than the field sports of Ringwood. The 
 
 dress of the latter, indeed, bore evidence of his 
 
 recent occupation, hard riding through deep lanes 
 
 having spotted him, " like a pard," fi-om head to 
 
 heel, for he had but just come home with the pad 
 
 of the fox which had gone away in the morning 
 
 fi"om Windmills Grange. 
 
88 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 "Here, boys" said Sir Mark, and leading the 
 Creole towards his two sons, " I've brought home 
 a new cousin to ye, so shake hands and take to 
 him at once, he comes of your own blood, and I 
 hope you feel it draw to him as I did. He's my 
 
 own nephew by Herbert out of but you can't 
 
 remember your uncle Herbert, for he went abroad 
 before you were born." 
 
 "Oh, yes," returned Ringwood eagerly, "and 
 married a black woman, and she stabbed him, and 
 Mrs. Hanway saw the scar when she laid out the 
 body, and it bled whenever she said Indiana." 
 
 " The devil take Mrs. Hanway," said Sir Mark, 
 " and whoever else opened on it, but only let a 
 woman give tongue " 
 
 " It was not a woman, papa," interrupted Ring- 
 wood ; " I had it from unlucky Joe, the post-boy. 
 I met him riding home one of his master's horses, 
 and he pulled up very civilly to tell me the new^s 
 about the Rabbits and uncle Herbert, and that you 
 were to come home in the post-chaise." 
 
 " And was that all ?" said Sir Mark hastily. 
 
 "Nothing else, papa, only I gave him a shilling 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 89 
 
 to drink" — here Ringwood laughed — " and he said 
 he was the unluckiest chap in the world, and gave 
 a sigh that would have turned round old Mudge's 
 windmill." 
 
 " And not a word about Bedlamite ?" asked the 
 Baronet, in some alarm, — " I'd promised him a 
 crown to bring him safe home to the Hall." 
 
 " Then as sure as I'm alive," exclaimed Ring- 
 wood, " it was Bedlamite that I saw at a distance, 
 galloping over the flats without a rider, only Dick 
 ofiered to hold me a crown that it was no such 
 thing, and he never bets, you know, except when 
 he's as right as a trivet." 
 
 Had four carrion crows, at that moment, flapped 
 at the window — had a spectral knacker's cart 
 passed, or seemed to pass, across the room, or a 
 warning hoof given three kicks at the door — had 
 a dog's meat barrow flown out of the fire — had an 
 ominous glanders of tallow guttered down the side 
 of the candle, while a death-watch of one-horse 
 power simultaneously struck up its tic doloreux, 
 the Baronet could not have had a stronger present- 
 iment of the death of his favourite. By the help of 
 
90 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 his sons he pulled a grandsire peal of triple bobs on 
 all the bells in the house, as well as the great one 
 on the outside, which alarmed company to their 
 dinner: at this extraordinary summons every 
 domestic on the establishment, male or female, 
 instantly put in an appearance, and in five minutes 
 every man or boy that could ride was galloping off 
 in the direction of the Flats. 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 91 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 " Woe worth the chase ! Woe worth the day, 
 That cost thy life, my gallant grey ! " 
 
 Lady of the Lake. 
 
 An hour had scarcely elapsed when the Baronet, 
 at about his sixtieth visit to the front window, 
 perceived the huntsman returning, like a discom- 
 fited captain of horse, with the remnant of his 
 company at his heels. As they came at a footpace 
 up the avenue, both horses and men hanging their 
 heads, indicating the bodily and mental distress 
 under which they laboured, Sir Mark, with a 
 qualm as if the gout had at last reached his heart, 
 abruptly turned his back on the doleful cavalcade, 
 but unfortunately was confronted with a large 
 painting of Bedlamite which hung on the opposite 
 wall. " Ay," he ejaculated, apostrophising the 
 
92 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 picture, " I was offered a cool two hundred for ye 
 this very morning ; but it isn't the guineas I care 
 for," he added, with a quivering voice, for the anti- 
 cipated catastrophe not only unhorsed but unman- 
 ned him. His next glance fell on an object no less 
 painful, a noble silver cup and cover, the produce 
 of a hunter's stakes, won by the same Bedlamite, 
 but who was perhaps never to clear a hurdle again. 
 Nor were these fears unfounded — Dick soon en- 
 tered, stroking down his forelock with one hand, 
 while the other brushed hastily across his eyes. 
 
 " It's a bad day's sport, your honour, if we had 
 killed twenty foxes and never a vixen among 'em. 
 Master Ringwood, I'm sorry to say your'n was the 
 true bill, it was Bedlamite and nothing else we 
 see'd galloping across the Flats. I'll wan-ant he 
 heard the hounds when he bolted off, and so com- 
 ing to the gravel-pits, your honour, for he never 
 refiised anythin' that looked like a leap, he went 
 slap at 'em, clearing seven good yards on end if 
 he springed an inch, and lighting after all on his 
 feet, r never see such a sight in life since the 
 crazy nursemaid that flinged herself out o' the 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 93 
 
 garret window. He was struck up all of a heap 
 like, with his legs jammed into his body. You'd 
 have thought his whirl bones and stifles was a 
 coming out at his Hues." 
 
 " There's amen then," sighed the Baronet, 
 " to the best hunter in England, whether as a 
 goer or a fencer — I'd rather have put down five 
 hundred guineas — but it's too late now, the breath's 
 gone — poor fellow I shall never see his like — d'ye 
 mind Dick the purl he gave me at the ox-fence 
 with the ditch on t'other side, — ^but he'll never put 
 out my collar-bone again." 
 
 "And please your honour," answered Dick, 
 i " exceptin' a bit of a snivel for my own father, 
 I never knew what crying was till this blessed 
 day. If he had died in the field after a hard run, 
 it would have been a different matter, but to break 
 his neck down a gravel-pit and without a livin' 
 soul on his back, is pitiful to think on. But I see 
 Master Ringwood is beginnin' to wince, and so I'll 
 say. fio more — ^but he'll be missed in the grooming 
 to-moiTow ;" so saying, the huntsman gave what he 
 would have called a cross between a nod and a 
 
94 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 bow, and if in opposition to a horse-laugh, there 
 be such a thing as a horse-sigh, with that very 
 kind of respiration he quitted the apartment. In 
 the mean time, Sir Mark had commenced pacing 
 up and down the room, his custom when he was 
 much excited, and was muttering to himself in 
 broken sentences — 
 
 " Ay, ay, a black day sure enough — first poor 
 Herbert, and then the grey horse — the best bro- 
 ther — and the best hunter that ever topped a fence. 
 But misfortune, as they say, always shoots right 
 and left with a double barrel. Here's Bedlamite 
 oh one hand with a broken neck, and yonder's my 
 own brother laid out for burying — seven good 
 yards into a gravel-pit ; as for that Joe lucky or 
 unlucky when I meet him, I'll ride over him — with 
 his whirl bones and stifles coming out of his loins — 
 God's will be done, but it's hard to bear — two 
 deaths in one day — two deaths in one day." 
 
 To go back a little in our story while Hanway's 
 post-chaise was preparing for the Baronet, the 
 doomed postiUion left the Rabbits mounted on the 
 vsumving post-horse belonging to his master and 
 
TYLNEY ■ HALL. 95 
 
 leading Bedlamite by the rein. They had trotted 
 however, barely a quarter of a mile, when whether 
 he really heard any hounds according to Dick's 
 sunnise, or whether he disdained the companion- 
 ship of a post-horse — the high spirited grey sud- 
 denly jerked the bridle out of Joe's hand, and 
 dashed off across the heath at his very best pace. 
 A few minutes sufficed to convince Joe of the 
 futility of hunting a hunter on a spavined job- 
 horse, and accordingly with his usual malediction 
 on his luck and his birth, and another on all the 
 grey horses in the world — he gave up the chase 
 as one of those bad jobs for which he let himself 
 out by the day, month, or year. Shortly after 
 the mishap he encountered Ringwood Tyrrel, but 
 could not muster courage enough to communicate 
 what had happened, and subsequent to this meet- 
 ing no person of the neighbourhood could re- 
 member having seen the familiar face of Unlucky 
 Joe. The post-horse indeed, was found duly lit- 
 tered down in his own stall in his master's stable, 
 but by whom he had been so replaced and at- 
 tended was a profound mystery even to the ostler 
 
96 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 and helps at the Inn. The well known despond- 
 ency of Joe's character induced his fellow-servants 
 to drag the horse-pond and to examine the well, 
 but they found nothing that could lead any one to 
 believe that such had been " his luck." 
 
 In the meantime the carcase of Bedlamite, as a 
 morsel too noble for crows or hounds, was care- 
 fully brought home, in order to undergo a formal 
 interment, which it subsequently received under a 
 mound in the Park, and Mr. Richard Tablet was 
 commissioned to erect a monument on the site. 
 As the worthy master mason had no architectural 
 invention of his own, he literally copied his obehsk, 
 cherubim and all, from a certain one in the village 
 church-yard, to the memory of Mrs. Eleanor Cobb. 
 Some persons wondered that he did not even copy 
 ih&Resurgam of the original, instead oi Requiescat 
 in Pace ; but as the village sculptor always pro- 
 nounced jK)ace as one syllable, it seemed to him the 
 aptest inscription in the world for a dead horse. 
 
TTLNEY HALL. 97 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 ^ " Men must not be poor ; idleness is the root of all evil ; the world's 
 wide enough, let them bustle; fortune has taken the weak under her 
 protection, but men of sense are left to their industry." 
 
 The Beaux Stratagem, 
 
 In due time the remains of Herbert Tyrrei 
 were translated from the Rabbits to Tylney Hall, 
 where they lay in state in the best bed-room, — 
 the body being ceremoniously watched, day and 
 night, by the domestics in rotation ; although the 
 guard was occasionally doubled, the females 
 decidedly objecting to sit up all alone with a 
 corpse, and paiticularly, as the dairy-maid re- 
 marked, "with a dead corpse which wasn't 
 screwed down." In extenuation of such super- 
 stitious fancies, it must be remembered, that 
 the lower classes of that day had not yet become 
 
 VOL. I. F 
 
98 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 penny-wise through the medium of Penny Maga- 
 zines, but were still absolutely pound foolish 
 on the subject of ghosts, and goblins ; nor was 
 a country milk-maid then aware, as doubtless 
 she is now, of the absurdity of a gentleman, 
 of sedentary habits, through life, taking to walk after 
 death, like a two-penny postman. 
 
 Besides, the chamber in question was actually 
 hung with some of the goblin tapestry of tradir 
 tion. According to the domestic chronicle, the 
 Tyrrels were descended from that same Sir Walter 
 Tyrrel, whose arrow, aimed at a deer, slew the 
 royal Rufus in the New Forest. The legend 
 darkly hinted, that it was no chance shot that 
 had glanced from a king's stag to a king's heart, 
 and indeed the immediate flight of the regicide, 
 and the apparently preconcerted facility of his 
 escape into France, seemed to justify the inference. 
 At any rate, it was matter of popular belief, that 
 the best bed room had been haunted ever since 
 by the apparition of a crowned king, with a 
 shaft sticking in his bosom ; and by way of col- 
 lateral evidence, certain huge antlers in the hall 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 90 
 
 were said to have been the very identical horns 
 of the stag that was missed. 
 
 In the mean time, the Baronet received daily 
 and hourly cards or calls of condolence from 
 persons, some of whom he knew by sight, some 
 by name, and some by neither. If death is fre- 
 quently guilty of severing relations and friends, 
 he is as often the occasion of bringing them to- 
 gether; for, at a demise, many branches of a 
 family meet and congi'egate, who but for such 
 an occasion would most probably have never 
 encountered for years. Then it is that strange 
 aunts, inicles, cousins, and demi cousins, gather 
 together as if fi'om the ends of the earth, to 
 mourn, or pretend to mourn, over a person they 
 would not have known by sight, and with whom 
 they have never been on visiting terms, till a 
 black edged card informed them that he was at 
 home in his coffin. Thus on the fifth night, at 
 the unusual hour of ten, the Baronet was favoured 
 with a huge card announcing the arrival of Mr. 
 Twigg, to sympathize as a branch in the sorrow 
 of the Tyrrels j and accordingly that person soon 
 
 F 2 
 
100 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 made his entrance, which, to Sir Mark, was 
 literally "a gentleman's first appearance in the 
 character of the Stranger." After a few bows and 
 compliments he proceeded thus : — 
 
 " I hope I know better, Sir Mark TyiTel, 
 Baronet, than to intrude at untimely hours, but as 
 the saying is, necessity has no law. It seems very 
 odd that a man of my property can't have a bed 
 at an inn, but so it is, though I offered the Green 
 Man a guinea for one, and that's sixteen shillings 
 more than ever I paid in my life. It's not very 
 pleasant for a man with money to go a begging 
 for a night's board and lodging ; but before your 
 hospitality opens an account with me, let's know, 
 says you, who and what you are." 
 
 " To tell the truth," replied the Baronet, " you 
 have really the advantage of me : though I hope 
 you won't take it as any thing personal : but there 
 ai*e so many strange faces in the field, I was never 
 so thrown out in my life. It's very strange. Sir, 
 but though I can caU over fifty couple of hounds 
 at sight, and have every one of 'em at the tip of 
 my tongue, and some of them not the easiest to 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 101 
 
 remember, — I say, Sir, it's very strange, but of all 
 the ladies and gentlemen that have been in at the 
 death of my poor brother, I can't give their own 
 names to one half of the pack, upon my soul I 
 can't, dog or bitch." 
 
 " Nothing more likely," returned the visitoi*, 
 " and particularly when there's property in the 
 case, and another name goes along with it. You 
 must know, I got five thousand consols from my 
 old master for changing Tyrrel into Twigg: not a 
 bad bargain, says you, and indeed I'd have taken 
 a whole firm on the same terms ; otherwise I have 
 as good a right as any one to have a stag's head 
 on my gold seal, though I've took a bee for my 
 crest in preference, as barring the five thousand, 
 all my honey and wax through life, as I may say, 
 has been of my own making. But that's neither 
 here nor there, as regards my right to roost on 
 your family tree. I presume. Sir Mark Tyrrel, 
 Baronet, you've heard of my grandfather, old 
 Tlieophilus Tyrrel, that died and left nothing to 
 nobody?" 
 
 " To be sure I have," said the Baronet, " he was 
 cleaned out on the turf. I remember I was at his 
 
102 .TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 funeral, and so were you, Sir; I thought I had 
 got a view of you somewhere, though I could not 
 hit it off. Let me see — my aunt's mother, and 
 your mother's aunt — but I shall only founder if I 
 attempt to go through the pedigree. Mr. Twigg, 
 you are heartily welcome to Tylney Hall." 
 
 " I beg to say I am much obliged, Sir Mark, 
 for all favours ; and must solicit a continuation of 
 the same for my horse, and my shay, and my ser^ 
 yant. By the by, if you'd like my shay to go 
 with the line of carriages, at the burying, I shall 
 feel happy to oblige: I brought my own man 
 down with me, and new blacked him on purpose, 
 I assure you it's a very spruce sort of a set-out — 
 bran new only a month ago — yellow picked out 
 with red, and lots of bright brass bees on the har- 
 ness. A bit of a flourish, says you, for one that 
 has known afore now what di'awing a truck is. 
 But Where's the harm o' that ? I've riz like a 
 rocket at Vauxhall by the exertion of my own 
 hands, and have as good a right to leave off with 
 a bit of a flash." 
 
 " Mr. Twigg," said the Baronet, " there's no 
 disgrace in a humble set out in life, provided we're 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 103 
 
 well up at the end : in this world, you know, we 
 can't all be equally mounted ; one begins his course 
 on a plate horse, may be, another on a cock-tail, 
 and another on a galloway ; but if by straight 
 riding, and so forth, a man's in a good place at the 
 finish, why it's to his honour and credit, and let 
 him have the brush or the pad, as may be, gentle 
 or simple." 
 
 " My own sentiments to a T," exclaimed the 
 delighted Twigg. " We ought never to forget what 
 we sprung from, as I said the very last Show to the 
 Lord Mayor, who begun life as a common waiter 
 at a tavern. My Lord Mayor, says I, while all 
 the steeples was a-pealing, them's bigger bells than 
 used to ring for you at the King's Head. To be 
 sure the Sword-Bearer took me to task, but I gave 
 him his change. I wonder, says I, a man can be 
 so uppish at riding behind six horses, that to my 
 knowledge has been drawn by eight, and that's 
 when he first came up to London in the Bath 
 waggon." 
 
 " I beUeve," said Sir Mark, " you were not inti- 
 mate with my poor brother Herbert — indeed he 
 
104 TYLNEY HALL; 
 
 was so long abroad, I can hardly say I was inti- 
 mate with him myself." 
 
 " Never set eyes on him,'* said Twigg, " but for 
 all that, am anxious to treat his remains with strict 
 assiduity and attention, and indeed any connection 
 in the same line ; and that's more than I could 
 say twenty years ago. It was all up hill then, and 
 living from hand to mouth, and even my own three 
 first children, God forgive me, I could not afford 
 to fret for ; but now I'm a man of property, I feel 
 for every body, and was at a neighbour's funeral 
 only last week. He died worth a plum, if he was 
 worth a penny, and kept his carriage. I remember 
 his pole though, before he had a pair of horses to 
 it, and good reason why, for it was nothing but a 
 barber's," 
 
 The entrance of supper put an end to these 
 excursions of memory up the stream of time, a 
 stream which Twigg was fond of ascending 
 against the tide, with the wilfulness and velocity 
 of a steamer. With all his seeming lowliness, he 
 had at bottom a deal of the devil's " darhng sin," 
 " the pride that apes humility." Out of nothing, it 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 105 
 
 is written, God created tlie world, and as out of 
 nothing Twigg had created some thirty thousand 
 pounds, he considered himself as a sort of Deity, 
 who had wrought a miracle. In short he liked 
 to insist on his o^ti littleness originally, in order 
 to enhance his apparent magnitude when viewed 
 afterwards through the solar microscope of suc- 
 cess; a flea as it were magnified by thirty 
 thousand into the proportions of an elephant. 
 To do him justice, he had made his way by in- 
 dustry and ingenuity, and was entitled to blazon 
 tliem if he liked as his supporters, instead of 
 " two salvages proper," or a brace of griffins : 
 but he did not sufficiently consider whether a 
 retired barber might choose to be stirred up with 
 his own pole, or an ex-waiter to have it always 
 rung in his ears, that he had been brought up 
 on Bell's system. 
 
 " Very fine lads upon my word,"*' he remarked, 
 as Ringwood, Raby, and the Creole, took their 
 seats at the supper table, " and it will be their 
 own faults if they don't shine in life. When I 
 was of your age, young gentlemen," he added, 
 
 F 3 
 
lOQ ,TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 addressing the boys, " I used to run of errands 
 and black shoes, and walked to Loudon with only 
 a shilling in my pocket, to seek my fortune ; and 
 now here I am, a man of property, and a common^ 
 council man besides. Not a bad example. Sir 
 Mark Tyrrel, Baronet, to be set before the rising 
 generation. I often think my own life and rise 
 in the world would make as good a history for 
 young persons as Dick Whittington's, one of the 
 best classical works, by the by, in the English 
 language." 
 
 " But it might be better for all that," remarked 
 Ringwood, with a look of appeal towards his father, 
 " I mean as to worrying the rats, for if the Black 
 King gave such heaps of gold for a cat, what 
 wouldn't he have come down for a keen ferret or 
 two, crossed with the pole-cat, and a bull-terrier 
 like Whop, and as good at all vermin by land or 
 water?" 
 
 " To be sure," answered the Baronet, " Whop 
 is worth his weight in gold — always goes at the 
 head, and you may chew his foot like tobacco 
 before he'll let go, whether of a badger or a 
 
TYLNEY HALL* 107 
 
 christian. I remember the grip he took of Black 
 Will the poacher," — but before the stoiy could 
 come off, the supper party was suddenly alarmed 
 by a bustle over head, followed by shrieks so shrill 
 and incessant, from the chamber of death, that for 
 a long minute each individual stared at his neigh- 
 hour as mute and motionless as a stag at gaze. 
 At last, snatching a candle, the Baronet rushed up 
 the staircase, followed by the others, Twigg at 
 every step, as became a man of property, bellow- 
 ing out, "Thieves! thieves! thieves!" 
 
108 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 " Noe doubt manie livinge persones, both menne and womenne, have 
 seen ye Deville bodilie, beinge like unto one hugeous black gote> with 
 hornis and taile.'' 
 
 King James i. 
 
 On entering the bedchamber, the screaming was 
 found to proceed from the dairy -maid and laundry- 
 woman. Both had thrown their aprons over their 
 heads, and each had backed her chair against 
 the opposite wall, through which she seemed en- 
 deavouring to force it by convulsive efforts of her 
 legs and feet, while with desperate energy her 
 hands clung to the mahogany elbows, as if in re- 
 sistance of human or super-human abduction. 
 
 " Skreek, Peggy, skreek," panted the laundress, 
 her own breath being just exhausted by a soste- 
 nuto on D in alt, and accordingly Peggy shrieked 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 109 
 
 with a shrillness and perseverance, that even a 
 stuck pig would have stuck at; and when her 
 voice failed, the other took it up, like the cele- 
 brated echo at Killamey, which always outdoes 
 its original. 
 
 " In the name of God, wench," said the Baronet, 
 seizing the daiiy-maid by the arm, " what game's 
 afoot to raise such a view halloo?" but before 
 she could compose a sentence, fear distributed it 
 all into pie, as a printer would say, by shaking 
 every word and syllable from each other. 
 
 " In the name of the devil," cried Twigg, care- 
 fully imitating the Baronet's movements, by seizing 
 the arm of the laundress, " what's the meaning of 
 this rumpus ? " but the two maidens continued to 
 squall against each other as if for a wager ; and 
 when Sh- Mark, and then Twigg, successively 
 plucked away an apron, they saw eyes resolutely 
 screwed together, as if they were never again to 
 unclose, and mouths as obstinately wide open as 
 if they were never more to shut. 
 
 " Confound your squalhng," cried Sir Mark, 
 " it's hke hawk and hern, striving which shall go 
 
110 TYLNEY HALL, 
 
 highest — you could not yell more if you'd unken* 
 neled the devil himself." 
 
 "Don't neame his neame," said the terrified 
 Peggy, with a shuddering groan like the low 
 neighing of a horse, " he's been in this very room 
 — only a minute ago, and mayn't be no great ways 
 off this blessed moment." 
 
 " I'll take my gospel oath on it," asseverated the 
 laundress, " on my own bended knees — with two 
 horns and a tail — and as soot black as the chimbley 
 back. One thing I'm sure on," she added sobbing, 
 "he's none o' my raising* God forgive me for 
 sayin so, but I don't know my prayers well enough 
 to say 'em back'ards. As for sin and wickedness, 
 except lookin in on a cousin or so on Sundays, 
 instead of going to church, or may be the vally of a 
 pint of strong ale, or being a little charitable with 
 the torn linen, or on a chance time lending the 
 master's shirts to be dirtied out by the footman — ^" 
 
 " Or obliging a poor man's pig with a little skim 
 milk" whimpered Peggy, " or a lone widow's hen 
 with a sitting o' eggs— the Lord be near us if 
 we're to go to the pit for such as that !" 
 
TYLNEY HALL. Ill 
 
 " Tm sure I don't know why he should come to 
 /iws," blubbered the laundi'ess, " any more nor tlic 
 cook and butler." 
 
 " A likely story truly," said the Baronet getting 
 impatient, " what the devil should the devil come 
 here for ? the brace of you isn't worth his fetching. 
 He'd hardly go a bat-fowling for a couple of 
 screech-owls." 
 
 " Saving your honour's presence," said Peggy, 
 with a reverential curtsey, " your honour in course 
 knows best. It's like enough the Wicked One 
 don't demean himself to come arter the likes of us 
 poor sarvants, when there's a dead gentleman in the 
 room. For sartin he did antic about the coffin very 
 fearsome, and seemed to make much on it — but the 
 Lord be near us," she ejaculated in a loud whisper, 
 " tliere he is again," — an announcement the laun- 
 dress took so promptly, that before he was aware 
 she had clutched Twigg by the arm, and was 
 hurrying him down stairs three steps at a time, 
 to the imminent risk of his neck. In fact, follow- 
 ing the direction of Peggy's eyes. Sir Mark plainly 
 perceived a black head peeping from behind a 
 
112 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 bed-curtain, an apparition so totally unexpected, 
 that for some moments, the spectators were all 
 as much confounded as if the Deuce had actually 
 turned up. At last, uttering a word of recognition, 
 the young Creole advanced boldly to the bed, and 
 dragging forward a black footman in a new suit of 
 sables, began to kick and cuff him with a freedom 
 which does not yet belong to this land of liberty. 
 Black or white, Sir Mark could not endure to see 
 a man so buffeted by a stripling, and he began to 
 interfere with some sternness, when the poor Negro 
 himself interceded for the offender, with an excuse 
 more worthy of a Christian than a Heathen. 
 
 " Nebber mind," he said, " me berry glad to see 
 him face. When Massa Walter a piccaninny, him 
 bite and scratch Pompey worse dan dat, nebber 
 mind. Him larrup Pompey ebbery day of him 
 life in San Kitts. Gorramity bless him ! me 'long 
 to Massa Twigg now Sare, but beforetimes me 
 'long to Massa Cumel Tyrrell — Gorramity bless 
 him, too. OhkiP' 
 
 It appeared on explanation, that Pompey had 
 formerly been a black unit in the West Indian 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 113 
 
 establishment of the deceased, but after passing 
 through various hands, he had come into the pos- 
 session of our citizen, through a will and testa- 
 ment by which Fortune had knocked down to him 
 the auction-Hke lot of five thousand pounds, the 
 simame of Twigg, and a Nigger. The affectionate 
 African having learnt below stairs the pedigree of 
 the corse, and taking advantage of a quiet round 
 game, set on foot in the kitchen by the imder- 
 taker's man, had crept stealthily to indulge in a 
 last look, and a last " talkee talkee " with his old 
 master, to the signal discomfiture of his new one. 
 
 " It's very hard," said the latter, as he re-entered 
 the room, " that a man like me can't have a black 
 footman, as well as other people of property, with- 
 out being deviled down strange stairs by a long- 
 legged washerwoman, into the very kitchen, among 
 common domestic menial servants, coachman, and 
 footman, and what not — not quite the thing for one 
 of the Livery. Pompey, you sir, mind your man- 
 ners, and don't stand grinning at Sir Mark Tyrrell, 
 Baronet. Make yourself scarce ! I'm very sorry, 
 I'm sure, to cause such a kick up in a respectable 
 
114 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 house> but it's all through that d d black man ; 
 
 and, says you, the Green Man too, for not giving 
 me a bed." 
 
 " Take it easy," said the Baronet, " and overlook 
 the black — my own jades were in fault to cackle 
 so over a mare's nest. To be sure, if the wenches 
 had sworn to a crowned king in a green hunting 
 coat, with a horn, and so forth, and a broad arrow 
 in the right place, I don't know if I'd have gone into 
 the room myself without a little craning — ^but I'll 
 tell you that story at our next meet, or there'U be 
 but a cold scent on the supper table. As it is our 
 pullets won't be a bit hotter for having been deviled. 
 But the devil has little to do with the like of /w'm," 
 he added, approaching the coffin ; and removing the 
 lid, he first patted the marble cheek, and then 
 kissed the brow of the corpse. 
 
 " As I may some day be sheriff," said Twigg 
 to himself, as in a dramatic aside, " it's as well to 
 accustom myself to death wherever I can," and 
 accordingly he placed himself on the opposite side 
 of the coffin, and began to look on its tenant so 
 earnestly, as to persuade the good-natured Baron6t 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 115 
 
 that he was one of the most feeling and sympa- 
 thising friends he had ever known. 
 
 A burst of grief, however, from the Creole, at 
 the sight of his parent, interrupted their very dif- 
 ferent meditations, and considerately replacing the 
 coffin lid, the uncle led his nephew down to the 
 supper table, followed readily by Twigg, whose 
 stomach had come to a proper sense of the empti- 
 ness of this life. He did not indeed omit drop- 
 ping something about poor man's sauce, having 
 been a poor man himself, and he appropriately ate 
 like one who had known what it is to want a 
 meal, washing it down afterwards like a man who 
 had known what it is to want four glasses of brandy 
 and water. 
 
 " I am an early bird," he said, towai'ds one 
 o'clock, " and must go to roost. Sir Mark TyiTell, 
 Baronet, I beg to say good night, and the same to 
 the young gentlemen, and hope they will sedu- 
 lously cultivate early habits, as the unvarying 
 means of getting up in the world. For my part, 
 I'm never called, but wake at six, as regular 
 as clock-work — but, says you, a man knows 
 
116 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 how to rise from his bed, that has risen from no- 
 thing." So saying, he seized his candlestick, and 
 the party separated for the night. 
 
 On the morrow the tomb closed over the re- 
 mains of Herbert Tyrrell. As the old ballad laco- 
 nically says, *^ the knell was rung, and the dirge 
 was sung," and the mourners departed; not a 
 little disappointed at his leaving only some per- 
 sonal property, and many were much scandalized, 
 that even this was bequeathed to a natural son, the 
 offspring of a woman of colour, and most likely, 
 but half a Christian. Twigg, however, protested 
 " that a man of his means did not need to go about 
 gaping after godsends and windfalls, and for his 
 own part, he must say, what with a sniff of country 
 air, and a relax from business, and the pleasant 
 prospects, and the good cheer, and a hearty wel- 
 come, and above all, the very polite, civil urbanity 
 of Sir Mark Tyrrell, Baronet, he must say, allowing 
 for the melancholy occasion, and the ruck in his 
 back from skurrying down such a noble flight of 
 stairs, it was altogether one of the pleasantest days 
 he had ever spent since he was independent." 
 
TVLNEY HALL. 117 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Look here upon this picture, and on this; 
 The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. 
 
 Hamlet. 
 
 Give me leave 
 
 To enjoy myself : that place that does contain 
 My books, the best companions, is to me 
 A glorious court, where hourly I converse 
 With the old sages and philosophers. 
 
 The Elder Brother. 
 
 Time, the soother of all sorrows, was not slow 
 in healing the wound inflicted on the Baronet, by 
 his brother's death. By degrees he resumed the 
 sports of the field, and especially the chace, into 
 which Ringwood entered with such zeal, that not 
 contented with doing as his father did before him, 
 he sometimes contrived to leave the old gentleman 
 behind him, to the infinite delight of Dick the 
 
118 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 huntsman, to whom, as Filch says, " he was in- 
 debted for his edication." The irreverend Dick 
 Doughty, indeed, took far more pleasure in his pu- 
 pil than fell to the lot of the Reverend Dr. Bur- 
 dock, who had undertaken to prepare the young 
 gentlemen for the University. The reason might 
 be that in Dick's equestrian school, Ringwood 
 always did his own exercise, whereas in the Doc- 
 tor's classical academy, it was too often done for 
 him by others. Dick reported his scholar as d — d 
 fast, and one as would go at any thing." The 
 Doctor that he was " deplorably slow, and did not 
 take to any one branch of learning." The hunts- 
 man swore that he had " the best seat on a horse, 
 and the lightest hand, in the whole country : and 
 he looked on the next hunter's plate as good as 
 booked to him." The pedagogue lamented to say, 
 he had " the worst head for the classics and ma- 
 thematics he ever knew, and indeed he should not 
 be very much surprised if he got plucked at Col- 
 lege." Even the partial parent confessed at times, 
 that Ringwood deserved " to be well horsed for 
 learning so Httle," at the same time taking hberal 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 119 
 
 care to horse him well, on thorough bred ones, be- 
 cause he hunted so much. This censure, however, 
 never escaped Sir Mark, but when he was a little 
 splenetic, under a fit of the gout. Indeed, on one 
 occasion, when the sporting Vicar, Dr. Cobb, 
 thought proper to sound the depths of the young 
 'Squire's Latin, as they waited the find together 
 by the cover side, the Baronet took it in some 
 dudgeon ; though he said nothing, till in running 
 Ringvvood cleared a stifi* fence, which no one else 
 would take, whereupon Sir Mark pulled his horse 
 alongside the hack of the Doctor, shouting out, 
 with all the extasy of a fox -hunter, " there Par- 
 son ; damme, could Cicero do that ! ! " 
 
 The Creole, also, or St. Kitts, as he was fami- 
 liarly nick-named by Sir Mark, from the place 
 of his birth, continued likewise to grow in 
 favour with his uncle, through the skill he dis- 
 played in hunting, fowling, and fishing ; but with 
 a deep chagrin, amounting at times to bitterness, 
 the Baronet observed the decided aversion of 
 Raby to all such pursuits. At the age of sixteen, 
 he could neither clear a hurdle, bring down his 
 
120 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 bird, nor throw a fly for a trout ; in short he was 
 awfully backward in his sporting. Thanks to the 
 reducing system of Dr. Bellamy, who always found 
 in " the lowest depth, a lower still," he had un- 
 dergone in his boyhood a long and languishing 
 illness, which had rendered him incapable of bo- 
 dily exertion : being thus thrown on his own re- 
 sources for amusement, he had taken eagerly to 
 reading, and an extensive old family library sup- 
 plied this appetite with plenty, as well as variety 
 of food. His especial favourites, however, wxre 
 the old English dramatists and poets, whose most 
 golden passages he got by heart, or rather by soul. 
 Absorbed in such studies, in which neither his 
 father nor his brother conld sympathize, he be- 
 came a sort of domestic anchorite, worshipping his 
 own idols in secret, with the more fervour, because 
 of the persecution he endured on their account. 
 At last, through the good nursing of Mistress De- 
 borah, who wisely thought and said, " that a 
 growing young — gentleman couldn't get fat — on 
 physic and a fig — for Dr. Bellamy"— Raby recovered 
 his strength and flesh; but he neglected the stable 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 121 
 
 and dog-kennel as much as ever. His passion for 
 letters had now overgrown and choked his taste 
 for the chase, if he ever had any, and probably he 
 felt it too late to begin to ground himself in the 
 mere A B C of those rural arts and sciences in 
 which his own contemporaries were already profi- 
 cients. " Ignorance is bliss," where knowledge is 
 only to be obtained by the scholar's going, looby- 
 like, to a school for adults. Besides, sickness and 
 personal suffering had subdued his nature into un- 
 usual gentleness, and with a tone of feeling of ex- 
 treme tenderness, indeed an almost over-wrought 
 sensibility, he had become sensitively abhorrent of 
 man's inflictions on the low^er animals, holding us 
 strictly bound, according to the poet, — 
 
 " Never to blend our pleasure or our pride 
 With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels." 
 
 " For my part," said Sir Mark, " I can't think 
 where the boy got it — his dear mother, God rest 
 her soul ! was the best horse-woman in Christen- 
 dom : — many a time the knife's been offered to her 
 to take say. But tell Raby of a stag of ten tines, 
 and he'll open about Shakspeare, and the big 
 
 VOL. I. G 
 
122 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 round tears running down his innocent nose, as if 
 it wasn't the nature of the beast to cry like a hu- 
 man creature. Not that I wouldn't as soon as any 
 one cry hark to humanity, only it's just not the time 
 for it, when Tiger and Terrible are hanging at his 
 throat. Pity's all veiy well provided it's the ge- 
 nuine milk of human kindness, but it's often too 
 like the London made stuff, nothing but chalk and 
 water. AVhy zounds, boy, if you were even trains 
 ing for the church, there'd be no harm in your 
 having a gallop with the hounds ; I remember the 
 time Dr. Cobb never missed a meet of the hunt, 
 and he often comes now to see them find, though 
 he's grown too fat and corpulent to enjoy Sf 
 burst." 
 
 To such remarks from his father, Raby made 
 little or no reply ; but when Ringwood ventured a 
 sneer at what he called the milksop amusements of 
 his brother, the latter always retorted with much 
 spirit and point on certain deficiencies, which 
 would have subjected the young Nimrod to the 
 old birch rod of Dr. Busby. These little dif- 
 ferences between the brothers might generally be 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 123 
 
 regarded as merely boxing with the muffles on ; 
 but as even this kind of sparring is attended with 
 some danger to the temper, it occasionally ended 
 in a quarrel in earnest. This result was always 
 aggravated by the injudicious interference of the 
 Creole, which only served to protract a battle into 
 a campaign, as a duel between two game cocks 
 is sometimes prolonged by the imtimely interpo- 
 sition of a third. 
 
 For example, — Gingerpile is down on the 
 broad of his back, with his head awry, and 
 looking like trussing. He gapes wider than 
 a young blackbird before breakfast, and his bloody 
 comb resembles a bit of underdone steak, when 
 the cook says, " it's only the gravy." Red stands 
 staggering and swaggering over him, mustering all 
 the breath in his crop for a crow, but the crop has 
 had a spur through it, yet that he is the victor he 
 knows, and looks knowingly with only one eye 
 on the vanquished. All the Poultry to Chick 
 Lane is the odds on him, when suddenly Black- 
 hackle unfairly strikes in, on his blind side, and 
 with a jfliirt, giving Red a fair back fall, enables 
 
 G 2 
 
124 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 Gingerpile to get second wind, and flare up again 
 like a phoenix. Accordingly, he scrambles on his 
 legs, and after a little game of see-saw between 
 his head and tail, he accomplishes a roupy chuckle, 
 which, unlike cockcrows in general, seems to recal 
 the ghost of Red, who rises and walks. At it they 
 go again : but after exchanging a bushel of pecks, 
 at last faintly billing like pigeons, they feebly lay 
 their necks by turns over each other, as if hate had 
 degenerated into love. Gingerpile is now, how- 
 ever, the freshest, and makes a rush at Red, who 
 ducks his head to avoid punishment, and attempts 
 to walk away between the other's legs, when he 
 gets such a spur right and left, that he is fain to 
 tuck his legs under him, and lay his breast to the 
 earth, as if brooding a batch of chickens. He is 
 evidently done out of the championship, or at least 
 he would be done out of it, but for the abominable 
 Blackhackle, who, like the king-making Earl of 
 Warwick, takes fresh offence at the sovereignty of 
 Gingerpile. With a dig somewhere near the root 
 of the tail feathers, he sends him to wriggle about 
 the yard till Red is ready for another round ; and 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 125 
 
 in this manner the contest is da-capo'd from hour 
 to hour, and from day to day, to the perpetual 
 disquiet of the yard. 
 
 Even thus did the Creole revive a drooping ar- 
 gument by some unseasonable fling at its anta- 
 gonist, which he was well enabled to do by the 
 diversity of his own taste, for he frequented the 
 covers which lodged authors, as well as those that 
 harboured foxes. Accordingly these discussions, 
 by the help of Jack-of-both-sides, generally ended 
 as drawn games, which were to be renewed be- 
 tween the parties at the first opportunity. It was 
 impossible, however, that such subjects of dispute 
 should remain in abeyance so long, without en- 
 gendering some degree of asperity, so that sharp 
 words and sudden heat sometimes arose on ques- 
 tions which had but a remote reference, if any, to 
 literature or sporting. 
 
 Possibly the Creole, who did not agree over 
 well with either of his cousins, was not displeased 
 secretly to see them differ a little with each other, 
 especially as it helped to avenge a personal grudge 
 which he entertained against both. Boys in the 
 
126 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 reckless levity of their mirth, have a proneness to 
 satire, which is apt to select personal defects or 
 peculiarities as butts for raillery and ridicule. 
 Prompted by this spirit, Ringwood and Raby, in 
 common with their schoolfellows, had set their 
 wits against the Creole, or rather his complexion, 
 a subject on which he was as sensitive, as if he 
 had been without a skin. A pitched battle with 
 each of the "palefaces" was the consequence, 
 wherein, to adopt the language of coursing, Creole 
 beat Raby, and Ringwood beat Creole ; Ringwood 
 thereby establishing his right to use the obnoxious 
 nickname of Gip, (the short for Gipsy,) which 
 had given rise to the contest. It must be remem- 
 bered, that St. Kitts descended by his mother's 
 side at least from those " souls of fire and children 
 of the sun, with whom revenge is virtue." It is 
 highly probable, therefore, that his defeat and the 
 offence of the provoking soubriquet rankled in 
 his mind long after its origin; but he buried it 
 hke Zanga, in his " heart of hearts," for his out- 
 ward bearing to his cousins was frank and open, 
 and accompanied with much profession and actual 
 
TYLNEY HALL* 127 
 
 appearance of affection. Nevertheless, it never 
 amounted to that absolute cordiality which obtains 
 between natures thoroughly congenial. There is 
 a mysterious instinct within us, which unemngly 
 guides the soul in its selection of a true friend^ 
 and neither witli Ringwood, nor with Raby, did 
 this secret impulse point towards the West Indian, 
 as one to be "grappled to the heart with hooks of 
 steel." 
 
 " I would thank you, Ringwood," said the 
 Creole one day to his elder cousin, who had just 
 been Gip-ing him, " I would thank you, Ringwood, 
 to remember that I have a Christian name, and a 
 siniame, as well as yourself. I have put up 
 hitherto, with the contemptuous syllable you 
 have been pleased to call me by, as a boyish im- 
 pertinence; but now that we are on the eve of 
 going to college together, I must inform you 
 that I shall look for a more suitable mode of 
 address. I shall certainly consider myself en- 
 titled to be called Walter, or at least any legiti- 
 mate abbreviation of that name you may choose 
 to adopt" 
 
128 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 " I have never disputed the legitimacy of your 
 Walter, or your Tyrrel either, with or without 
 abbreviations," retorted Ringwood, whose tem- 
 per was a Httle turned, by his having been 
 thrown out in hunting. " And as we are 
 going to college, where of course you will 
 give me the go by, I intended to drop Gip 
 of my own accord, as it might not come well, 
 hereafter, from plain Ringwood Tyrrel to 
 an LL.D." 
 
 " If your emphasis on legitimate," returned the 
 Creole hastily, " implies any unworthy allusion to 
 my birth, I will only remind you, that the impu- 
 tation touches your uncle, as well as my father, 
 and leave your heart to its own reproach." 
 
 " I meant no offence, St. Kitts," said the really 
 good hearted Ringwood, " and am sorry if you've 
 been wnmg — come, shake hands, and bum the 
 stud book ! As it touches you on the raw, if I 
 call you Gip again, I give you leave to call me 
 Flincher in the face of the whole field." 
 
 The Creole took the hand that was proffered, 
 or rather he suffered his own to be taken by it, 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 129 
 
 for as the grammatical Dr. Burdock would have 
 observed, to shake hands was with one a verb 
 active, and with the other a verb passive. And 
 thus ended a quarrel, that Ringwood instantly 
 ibrgot, but the sting of which his cousin pre- 
 sented, and hermetically sealed up like a serpent 
 in spirits. 
 
 The month following this skirmish, the trio 
 departed for Oxford, a change of much indif- 
 ference to the Creole, of considerable gi*atification 
 to Raby, and prodigious vexation to Ringwood ; 
 when he discovered that the rules and regula- 
 tions of Alma Mater were very much the same 
 in spirit with the notice so commonly set forth 
 at the gates of the public gardens round the Me- 
 tropolis ; namely 
 " NO DOGS OR PATTENS ADMITTED." 
 
 g3 
 
ISO TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 " Since I mounted^ an the towers of pride and ambition, my soul ha« 
 been invaded by a thousand miseries, and a thousand toils, and four 
 thousand disquiets." 
 
 Sancho Panza. 
 
 Before the young Collegians had been gone a 
 week, Sir Mark began to feel very dull and lonely, 
 especially as his gout had set in again with a 
 rigour which threatened to outlast the remainder 
 of the hunting season. Laid up in an easy chair, 
 with his two supporters couchant instead bf 
 rampant, he had many long hour for reflection ; 
 even his friends who wore the button of the hunt, 
 being a little apt to neglect him, when he was 
 incapable of a run, regarding him in much the 
 same light as a fox who had been lamed in a gin. 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 131 
 
 In this dilemma, his thoughts naturally looked 
 forward to the period when age and infirmity 
 might withdraw him permanently from the field, 
 and he began to calculate on his future situation 
 with all its contingencies. 
 
 " In the course of nature," he soliloquized, " the 
 short breath of poor broken-winded old Deborah 
 won't last out many winters, though she has been 
 taken up from hard work, but age wont be denied. 
 She has beon a good one in her day, and I shall 
 have a heavy miss of her when it comes to a mort 
 — for let alone her capital tooling of the whole 
 team of servants, she's the only hedge I have 
 against Dr. Bellamy, who's too fond of shortening 
 my feeds, and taking me off hard meat to put me 
 upon mashes. God knows what I shall do when 
 I come to be gouty for good, or may be bedridden 
 and dead-foundered towards the finish. It wouldn't 
 be a bad cast to scribble a line or two to sister 
 Kate, and get her to run a trail to Tylney Hall to 
 take the lead of the house like, and be the whip- 
 per-in to the maids. Besides, the boys by and by 
 will be leaving college, and will want to be pair- 
 
132 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 ing for life, and to be looking out among the young 
 misses, but the devil a young lady will come to 
 the Hall now there's no females to visit. Kate 
 is a gentlewoman, and well bred, though I've 
 known even a raw-boned crib-biting old jade of an 
 aunt, with a devilish pain in her temper, a good 
 deal backed by young girls, provided there were 
 some handsome blood-like looking colts of nephews 
 in the same stable. By the by, I wonder that 
 Grace Rivers never shows now at the Hall, where 
 she was always first favourite. D — n the Paragon 
 filly for dying, for I meant to have named her 
 after Grace. Egad I should like to see Ringwood 
 riding a steeple-chase to Tylney church, and 
 her little white hand to go to the winner. The 
 old Justice's lands join ours, and it would be a 
 pretty property to include through a marriage in a 
 ring-fence." 
 
 In conformity with these politic calculations, in 
 which he considered he had made up anything but 
 a bad book, the Baronet immediately rang for pen 
 and ink, and concocted a letter to his sister in the 
 north, who had married a Scotch laird, and was 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 133 
 
 recently become a widow ; and what was still 
 better in his estimation, a widow without either 
 colt or filly to run whinnying after her heels. The 
 epistle, after a page of awkward, but honest 
 condolence, conveyed a pressing invitation to the 
 relict to spend the remainder of her days at 
 Tylney Hall, and it concluded by requesting an 
 immediate answer, hoping " she would not sit in 
 the saddle craning over the Border, but charge it 
 at once, and return at her best pace to the seat of 
 her ancestors." 
 
 In the meantime the Baronet was not displeased 
 to learn from Dr. Bellamy, that a family had just 
 come to settle in the vicinity, whose visits promised 
 to dissipate his ennui, as they declared themselves 
 to be distant relatives of the Tyrrels. 
 
 " I have been honoured with the compliment," 
 said the Doctor, " of being called in to the whole 
 family the very day after their arrival. As they 
 had removed from the metropolis to the country, 
 by way of precaution against the sudden change 
 of air, I had the gratification of prescribing an 
 alterative for them all round. Mr. Twigg, indeed. 
 
134 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 did me the favour to object to taking anything 1 
 recommended, saying, that a man who had met 
 with his changes in hfe needn*t care for changes 
 of air ; but I had the pleasure of persuading him 
 to a pill over night, and a draught in the morning. 
 If I recollect right, I had the happiness of riding 
 in the same mourning coach with him at the inter- 
 ment of the lamented Colonel Tyn'el ; and really 
 found the gentleman very agreeable and pleasant." 
 In fact, Twigg, at the burial in question, had be- 
 come so enamoured of a country life, that he made 
 up his mind to retire some day from civic dignity 
 into " rural felicity,'* 
 
 ** With a cow, and a pig, and a barndoor and all," 
 
 A plan he now put in execution by purchas- 
 ing, as advertised, " a large roomy family house, 
 with an extensive walled garden w^ell stocked, and 
 about fifty acres of land, arable and pasture." 
 Since his last visit to the coimtry he had almost 
 doubled his capital, and had served the office of 
 Sheriff of London ; but as that city seemed in no 
 hurry to make him its Lord Mayor, he determined 
 to withdraw like Cincinnatus to a Sabine farm. 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 135 
 
 In choosing the locality of this pastoral retreat, 
 he was guided by three suggestions ; which, like 
 the witches in Macbeth, severally addressed them- 
 selves to his ambition. The first saluting him as 
 Timothy Twigg, Esquire, hinted that a friendly 
 intercourse with the Baronet would be the means 
 of introducing him to the best society in the coun- 
 ty — no slight advantage to a man who, in any 
 other shire, would have been " alike unknowing 
 and unknown." The second hailing him as Mr. 
 Sheriff Twigg, reminded him that there were such 
 things as Sheriffs of counties ; and that there was 
 no earthly reason why one office shouldn't lead to 
 the other. And the third dubbing him at once, 
 whispered that the daughter of Sir Timothy 
 Twigg, Knight, and the son of Sir Mark Tyrrel, 
 Baronet, would be as tvvelvepence to a shilling 
 with regard to rank. 
 
 With these views the prosperous citizen pur- 
 chased the desirable mansion called Hollington 
 House, a name he thought proper to alter to The 
 Hive. In the same spirit he removed the two 
 eagles volant that flanked the great gates, and sub- 
 
136 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 stituted a pair of stone bee-hives, at the same 
 time favouring the sun-dial in the fore court with 
 a motto from Dr. Watts, concerning the little busy 
 insect he had chosen for his crest. A Latin in- 
 scription on an ornamental obelisk in the garden 
 was replaced by a maxim from Poor Richard's 
 Almanack, and the octagon summer-house was 
 labelled with eight out of the twelve Golden Rules. 
 Indeed he indulged in this whim so proftisely that 
 the parish wags took the hint, and again stood 
 godfathers for the house, to which they gave the 
 appropriate name of " the House of Industry." 
 
 This alias somewhat tried the temf)er of Mr. 
 Twigg, who thought it very hard that a man of 
 his property could not give what name he chose 
 to his own house, as well as to his own child; 
 but his prospect of " rural felicity" began already 
 to be obscured by clouds from other quarters. An 
 ironmonger does not necessarily acquire a know- 
 ledge of agriculture, because ploughshares spades 
 and sickles are amongst his items of commerce ; 
 and when our retired hardwareman turned gentle- 
 man-farmer, he found to his infinite annoyance 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 137 
 
 that it required a previous apprenticeship as much 
 as any other business. Ignorance and obstinacy 
 however are as closely united as the Siamese Twins, 
 and even in farming, Mr. Twigg chose to go his 
 own road, which, as he walked in the dark, was 
 pretty sure to be the wrong one. He had been 
 used to activity he said, all his life, and could not 
 sit down with his hands before him and look on. 
 He consequently interfered so pertinaciously in 
 every rural or domestic act, as to realize the coun- 
 tryman's description of Garrick, " a little brisk 
 man, as busy as a bee, and on the stage the whole 
 time." 
 
 He had notified to the Baronet, through Dr. 
 Bellamy, that " as gout prevented the honour of a 
 call at the Hive, he intended to wave ceremony 
 and drop in himself at the Hall, to receive congra- 
 tulations and cetera on coming to his landed 
 estate." Day passed after day, however, without 
 bringing the promised visitor, till at last one fine 
 morning Sir Mark dissolved the Doctor's injunction 
 against horse exercise, and mounting his sorrel 
 hack rode leisurely over to HoUington — " to see," 
 
138 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 as he said, " whether the whole swarm had not 
 suffocated themselves in housewarming the Hive." 
 
 " Egad," ejaculated Sir Mark, as he looked up 
 at the emblems which superseded the old eagles, 
 " his bees are no drones. It's well old Sir Theodore 
 Bowles has got the dust in his eyes, or a sight 
 like this would raise his hackle. As I live, too, 
 there's Pompey the Great, in sky blue and orange, 
 coming to open the gate. Well, Beelzebub, is 
 your master at kennel, or on the pad, hey ? " 
 
 " Maybe iss, maybe no, Sar," answered Pompey 
 with a low bow. " Walk dis way, Sar," he con- 
 tinued to the Baronet, who for lack of attendance 
 was fain to cast his horse's bridle over the gnomon 
 of the sun-dial; " walk dis way, Sar," ushering the 
 visitor towards the drawing-room, and half open- 
 ing the door, but which he suddenly slammed to 
 again at a signal from a lady within, of whom Sir 
 Mark got a glimpse sufficient to show that she was 
 busy with several new hats and some yards of 
 gold lace. 
 
 " Sar, walk dis way,'* repeated Pompey, turning 
 sharp off to the left, " and pray sit down in de 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 139 
 
 billard-room," at the same time throwing the door 
 wide open ; but the Baronet again retreated of his 
 own accord, on beholding a young lady partly 
 " uncased," as he would have called it, who, in 
 company with her dressmaker, was too busily en- 
 gaged over a series of silk dresses which covered 
 the billiard table, to notice the intrusion. 
 
 " Beg pardon, Sar, walk dis way," reiterated the 
 discomfited Pompey, wheeling off to the right, 
 " nobody is in de parlour ;" but the door of this 
 Bluebeard chamber was locked on the inside, and 
 whatever mysterious personage was in the room, 
 he or she had evidently some private reason for 
 remaining incog. 
 
 In this dilemma poor Pompey left the Baronet 
 standing in the middle of the hall, while he popped 
 his puzzled head in at the door of the library to 
 ask massa if he was at home, the only answer to 
 which was an audible imprecation on his black 
 face, and a command to show every one into the 
 drawing-room. 
 
 " Please, massa, dere is no room at home but de 
 kitchen," whispered Pompey, cautiously reducing 
 
140 TYLNEY HALLi 
 
 the aperture of the door to a crack, " and it's 
 Massa Baronet Tyrrel : " an announcement which 
 operated so electrically on the master of the house 
 that it drew him from his den like a badger. In 
 fact, he rushed out in his shirt sleeves and an 
 apron, and leading Sir Mark with a warm welcome 
 into the library, offered him the only chair that 
 was vacant, in the meantime apologizing profusely 
 for the state of the sanctorum and his own ap- 
 pearance. 
 
 " It's very ridiculous for a man of my property 
 to be found in this pickle, but every body is 
 obliged now and then to be not at home, though, 
 says you, I ought to be quite at home among so 
 much hardware. To be sure watering pots, and 
 steel traps, and spades, and scythes, and other 
 ironworks, isn't quite the works for a book-room ; 
 but I objected to take the old watering pots and 
 cetera at the valuation, and good reason why, I 
 could have them bran new for the money from my 
 warehouse, and to-day they've come down by the 
 waggon, and I was just checking them by the 
 invoice." 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 141 
 
 " My good Sir," replied the Baronet, " it's no 
 fault of yoiir's if I've walked you up in moulting 
 time, and you aie not in full feather. I've been 
 amiss and dead lame with the gout, or I should 
 have been over before to bid you welcome to 
 Hollington. I sincerely hope you find your new 
 house to your liking, and the air agreeable to your 
 constitution." 
 
 " Candour compels to say," answered Twigg, 
 his brow suddenly over-casting as he spoke, " I'm 
 afraid it don't. Between you and me, I find re- 
 tirement very hard work, and have hardly had 
 time to eat, drink, or sleep, since I left off business. 
 I never felt so low in my life, and I've been as low 
 in life as most people. But I mustn't forget my 
 manners now I'm a gentleman : it's time says you 
 to go into the di'awing-room and be introduced to 
 Mrs. T. ; I'll be bound she's waiting for us with the 
 cake and wine." So saying he led the way to the 
 drawing-room, where they found Mrs. Twigg play- 
 ing the lady at a short notice. After the usual 
 ceremonies of presentation, the father enquired for 
 
142 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 Miss Twigg, to which the mother replied, " that she 
 was in the hbrary, studying and improving her 
 mind with the fashionable novels." 
 
 *^ It's a lie, Madam," exclaimed Twigg, who was 
 really a domestic Dionysius, " IVe just come from 
 the library myself." 
 
 " It's really a pity, Mr. T.," replied the wife, 
 taking the epithet as calmly as if she was used to 
 it, " that you let your temper be ruffled so by 
 them servants. I hope there's no harm in not 
 knowing exactly where Miss Twigg is, considering 
 up to this very minute I've been engaged in the 
 garden — showing the gardener where he's to sow 
 the rose bushes, and plant the mignionnette." 
 
 " Then Pompey's a liar any how, for he told me 
 you were in the drawing room, gold-banding the 
 servants' hats." And with this which he called a 
 clencher, Twigg turned to the Baronet, saying, 
 " You see I mean to be the king bee of my own hive." 
 
 " I hope. Madam, you like your new mansion, 
 and the neighbourhood," said Sir Mark, addressing 
 the lady of the house, by way of putting a change 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 143 
 
 upon the conversation, " It's as pretty a country 
 as one would wish to cross, never deep in winter, 
 and the fences not stiffer than common." 
 
 " I have no doubt, Sir," answered Mrs. Twigg, 
 " I shall find it just what you say, provided I'm 
 able to leave the house ; but at present if I was to 
 turn my back it would be all high life below 
 stairs. Twelve in the kitchen is an evening party 
 of themselves, but they can't be content. This 
 very morning I heard the groom talking to the 
 coachman about giving a ball." 
 
 " I have no doubt you did. Madam," replied the 
 Baronet, looking very significantly at Twigg, to 
 whom he remarked in a whisper, " she's run- 
 ning riot after a countiy dance and a dose of bitter- 
 aloes." 
 
 " Make yourself easy, Mrs. T., about the groom," 
 said Twigg, " for he'll groom no more here : I 
 warned him off the premises an hour ago for de- 
 ceiving me about the grey mare. The more fool 
 says you to take his judgment, for of course he had 
 a feehng out of the bargain, but a man that has 
 ridden for fifty years upon shanks's naggy can't be 
 
144 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 expected to know much about horses. But it don't 
 do Sir Mark Tyrrel, Baronet, for a man of my 
 property to show ignorance, so says I, Thomas, 
 between you and me and the post is this mare a 
 good horse ? Sir, says Thomas, take my word on 
 her, she's no action behind, none whatever; and 
 accordingly I bought her and paid for her down 
 on the nail ; but instead of being a quiet one as he 
 said, the very first time she was gigged she kicked 
 the what-d'ye-call-it all into splinters." 
 
 " Not used to single harness may be," remarked 
 the Baronet, " or only half broke. But how goes 
 on the garden — it used to be well looked after by 
 old Grubb?" 
 
 " Old Grubb has got warning too, Sir Mark," 
 replied the lady, " and I'm sorry to say arn't 
 working out his month as if he cared about a 
 character. By desire of Mr. T. he was to sow- 
 six sacks of potatoes, and out of sheer spite, he 
 has sliced 'em all up into slivers, as if they were 
 going to be baked under a joint of meat." 
 
 " Damn the potatoes " said Twigg, getting 
 waiTO, " that's only a flea bite : but it is hard. Sir 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 145 
 
 Mark, that a man like me can't walk over my own 
 fields, to look at my own prospects, without having 
 my head threatened into holes. Only last Monday, 
 I was called to, if I didn't make myself scarce, my 
 brains would be let out for a holiday, by a ruffian- 
 looking fellow that was driving pegs into the 
 ground, with pieces of wire tied to the top." 
 
 " Necklaces for poor Puss," said the Bai'onet 
 with a significant wink to Twigg, which Twigg 
 took like a man who heard, for the first time, of 
 cats wearing such ornaments. 
 
 " But of course, Madam," continued Sir Mark, 
 " you derive gi*eat satisfaction from your dairy. 
 I've observed there's nothing my own town friends 
 settle down to so kindly, as the home made butter!" 
 
 " It a'nt eatable," exclaimed Mrs. Twigg, her 
 eyes filling with tears, '' and we have to buy from 
 the village. I'm sure it's no fault of our's, for we 
 keep four cows." 
 
 "As for eggs," chimed in Mr. Twigg, "if I wanted 
 one for breakfast, I might as well look for 'cm in a 
 mare's nest. We've got thirty hens, but it's all talk- 
 ing and no doing ; they all go cackling about the 
 
 VOL. I. H 
 
146 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 stable-yard, instead of laying. Talking of the 
 stable-yard, Sir Mark, how much victuals ought 
 one to give a coach-horse for a meal ? " 
 
 " Half a peck of oats mixed \^'ith chaff, morning, 
 noon, and night, and as much hay as they'll eat," 
 said the Baronet, " with maybe a handful of beans 
 according to their work/' 
 
 " I said so, Mrs. T." exclaimed Twigg, vrith 
 almost a shout, " the animals are over-indulged. 
 " My horses. Sir Mark, every day they sit down 
 to eat, have a truss of hay a-piece, two pecks of 
 oats, and beans by the bushel, for I've calculated 
 their bills of fares." 
 
 " Egad then," said Sir Mark, "if they've any 
 blood in 'em they'll want good handling, and curb- 
 ing up tight, for of course they're ready to jump 
 out of their harness." 
 
 "Not a bit of it," said Twigg, "they're as 
 gentle as Jarvies, and go as slow as if they were 
 taking a fare off the stones a little before sunset." 
 
 " And they had need to be dossil," exclaimed 
 Mrs. Twigg, " with such an unsober coachman. 
 The only ride I've had, I got out and walked. It's 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 147 
 
 a thousand pities too, for he's a rosy fresh-coloured 
 man, and looks well in the skyblue and orange." 
 
 The conversation was here interrupted by the 
 entrance of Miss Twigg, who, in answer to the 
 parental enquiries, replied, that she had been an 
 airing in the new carriage. She was a fine showy 
 looking girl of seventeen, with dark active eyes, 
 which kept a good look out, though not on the 
 Preventive service; a nose handsome, but pro- 
 minent, and a good set of teeth, which she was as 
 fond of showing as a wiry Scotch terrier. Even 
 at so early an hour as noon she appeared to be 
 dressed for dinner, and to tell the tmth, a little 
 overdone. She was evidently her father's idol, 
 and his eyes beamed with triumph, as he pre- 
 sented her as his only daughter to "Sir Mark 
 T^Trel, Baronet," whom she favoured with one of 
 those curtseys, which, to adopt a common ora- 
 torical figure, are " backward in coming forward." 
 " I have been telling the Baronet, my love," 
 said Mrs. Twigg, "how beset we are with our 
 servants. Perhaps, Sir Mark Tyrrel, Baronet, if an 
 old resident, you can inform if it's true, that this 
 
 H 2 
 
148 TYLNEY HALL, 
 
 very house has beea so repeatedly robbed and 
 broke into as is said. For my own part, I have 
 never been quite easy, since observing that the 
 house-dog objects to bark at any one but the 
 family." 
 
 " If my memory can hold its own," said Sir 
 Mark, " there were two or three little attempts at 
 bui'glary, but they never got beyond a hole in the 
 shutter. Old Sir Theodore was game to the back- 
 bone, and a dead shot, and would as soon have 
 peppered a house-breaker as a self-hunting cur." 
 
 " There's no comfort in that," remarked the 
 young lady, looking gravely towards her mamma, 
 " for papa never could let off anything in his life — 
 not that even blunderbusses would be of use in 
 such frights as ours. What with the screech-owl, 
 and the wind tolling the dinner-bell, and the 
 pigeons coming flapping down the chimney, and 
 the horrid rats behind the old wainscot, I never 
 spent such terrifying nights since I read the 
 Romance of the Haunted House." 
 
 " To tell the truth," said Twigg to the Baronet, 
 in a confidential tone, " the Hive doesn't make 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 149 
 
 much honey at present, and I'm afraid IVe come 
 down rather too much for the good-will — but 
 halloo," he shouted as he ran to the window, 
 " that damned blackamoor has tied the horse to 
 the sun-dial, and he has pulled its nose off! " 
 
 In fact the Sorrel was grazing about the forecourt 
 with Time's index hanging to his bridle ; a sort 
 of hint, as it seemed, to his master, who accord- 
 ingly took his leave ; and as he trotted home, he 
 could not help mentally remarking, that to judge 
 from the number of faults and checks, the Twiggs 
 were hunting after happiness with an infernal 
 cold scent. 
 
150 TYLNEY HALL, 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Isab. Yet show some pity. 
 
 Aug. I show it most of all, when I show justice; 
 
 For then I pity those I do not know, 
 
 Which a dismiss'd offence would after gall ; 
 
 And do him right, that, answering one foul wrong, 
 
 Lives not to act another. 
 
 Measure for Measure. 
 
 Oh, she is 
 Ten times more gentle than her father's crabbed ; 
 And he's composed of harshness. 
 
 Tempest. 
 
 The Baronet had accomplished about half the 
 distance homeward, when at the turn of a lane he 
 caught sight of a gentleman, who was walking in 
 the same direction, with a young lady leaning 
 upon his arm. He immediately gave a joyous 
 view holla, and urged his Sorrel into a gallop. 
 
TYLNEY HALL. lol 
 
 which quickly brought him alongside of the 
 pedestrians, whom he had recognised afar off, as 
 his old friend and neighbour Mr. Rivers, and his 
 first favourite Miss Grace. As the stem magis- 
 trate and his daughter turned their heads at once 
 towards the rider, they presented a striking imper- 
 sonation of Justice tempered with Mercy; the pale 
 face of the father wearing its usual expression 
 of austerity, with features as frigid as a December 
 day, when frost has stereotyped even the fluids 
 into rigid forms and wrinkles ; while the cheerful 
 countenance of the daughter laughed all over, redo- 
 lent of health, youth, and joy, as a May morning. 
 
 Never did the sunlight fall on two so dif- 
 ferent, yet so akin. Law had indeed inscribed her 
 terrors on the person of her minister — he had a 
 high square forehead, straight black eyebrows, and 
 two dark stedfast eagle-looking eyes, that evidently 
 would not wink at anything. His nose was Roman, 
 which, like a buttress, served to support his face in 
 its massive dignity ; and his mouth was rather wide, 
 with two almost invisible thin lips which were 
 always pale from habitual compression. In com- 
 
152 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 plexion and texture his skin resembled parchment, 
 and seemed equally devoid of life and feeling. 
 Draco indeed, Avhen he wrote his laws in blood, 
 must have derived his fluid from the veins of some 
 such stem worshipper of Themis, seeing that it 
 was an ink nothing akin to those which are called 
 sympathetic. No impulse of human passion, 
 love, hate, anger, or grief, ever altered the hue 
 which dwelt on the obdurate visage of the magis- 
 trate, whom a romantic fancy might have taken for 
 the Cadi of that oriental city in the Arabian Nights 
 whose inhabitants were all turned into marble. 
 
 In figure he was very thin, very tall, and veiy erect, 
 so that with his forbidding countenance at top, he 
 might be aptly compared to a " take notice" board, 
 promising prosecution and persecution according 
 to law to all trespassers on the wide domains of 
 the statutes at large. On the Bench indeed, he 
 held himself so stiffly upright in person, and sO 
 staunchly inflexible in feeling that, as a waggish 
 London attorney once remarked, " he seemed ac- 
 tually to have swallowed the sword of Justice." 
 
 By the side of this portentous personage stood 
 
TYLN^Y HALL. 153 
 
 the fairy-like Grace, the sunshine transmuting her 
 aubum locks into gold, and glistening in her gentle 
 eyes, deeply blue and liquid, as violets bathed in 
 dew. But rocks have their flowers, and deserts 
 their fountains : and from the hard arid nature of 
 the pai'ent sprang a beautiful plant, so instinct 
 with a gushing sympathy for human soitow, as to 
 resemble that weeping tree which refreshes the 
 parched inhabitants of earth with the moisture it 
 has collected from heaven. Too seldom was she 
 allowed to intercede between justice and its vic- 
 tims ; but when she did, she was like the angel in 
 Sterne, who dropped a tear on the indictment, and 
 blotted it out for ever. As the sole child of a 
 widower, her voice had a charm, like the music of 
 Orpheus, to soften the rock and bend the rugged 
 oak of her parent's nature, who now and then 
 relented, like Pluto, and allowed a poor soul who 
 had fallen into his Tartarus, to revisit the light and 
 air. Many blessings were consequently showered 
 on the beautiful head of Grace Rivers ; and in par- 
 ticular, the fervent petition of a grateful Irishman 
 
 H a 
 
154 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 who had been reprieved through her influence, 
 became quite a popular form of prayer. " Oh the 
 darlint of the world. A joyful long life to her, and 
 many of 'em. And plaze God to send his Honour 
 another lady, and a dozen more only daughters ! " 
 
 " Zounds ! neighbour, you've been a shy cock 
 lately," said Sir Mark, dismounting and passing his 
 arm through the bridle ; " time was you used to 
 make the Hall your home, but a badger couldn't 
 have given it up more thoroughly if a fox had 
 laid his billot at the door. I almost began to think 
 it who-oop to our old friendship. I've a crow to 
 pick with Grace too — I don't know whether I 
 oughtn't to pluck a whole rookery, squabbs and all." 
 
 " I should feel your reproach. Sir Mark, as a 
 capital indictment," returned the Justice, " if my 
 conscience could find it a true bill. But private 
 pleasures must defer to the public service." 
 
 **'And my pleasure to my father's," added 
 Grace, at the same time offering her little hand to 
 the Baionet, who clasped it in " his broad 
 bronzed hand," with an affection which showed 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 155 
 
 that the crow he had talked of picking was in 
 reality a dove. 
 
 " We have had a very heavy sessions," said the 
 Justice, resuming his apology. " Of course you have 
 heard of the murder at Hazel Bridge, and as a 
 zealous magistrate, my time and humble talents 
 have been arduously employed, — I need only say, 
 I have had eighteen taken up on suspicion, and 
 remanded twelve." 
 
 " I really believe," said Grace, " those dread- 
 ful murderers will be the death of my poor father ; 
 he scarcely eats, drinks, or sleeps, till he brings 
 them to justice ; and considering the misery and 
 terror of the mothers, and wives, and sisters, 
 and children, of those he is obliged to suspect 
 and apprehend, I can conceive nothing more 
 harrowing to the feelings." 
 
 "FeeUng" said the Magistrate, "is out of the 
 question ; the course of justice is like that of the 
 sacred car of Jaggernaut, which may not deviate 
 from its appointed path to spare the voluntary 
 sufferings of those who may choose to throw 
 themselves under its wheels." 
 
15G TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 " It's a mercy, then, your car don't drive much near 
 London," said the Baronet laughing, " or it would 
 soon have more deodands than spokes on its wheels. 
 As for the boys, they try how leisurely they can 
 cross before your horse's nose, and by Jove, they 
 time your pace to a second. Then there are the 
 spavined and wind-galled old women, that can't 
 make up their minds to cross, till you're close on 
 their haunches. And the gossipping old men that 
 pull up in the middle of the road, to observe the 
 changes in the neighbourhood ; to say nothing of 
 the tipsy ones, that try to win a race with you by 
 crossing and jostling ; or the Sunday evening folks, 
 when the infantry will walk in the horse -road, and 
 the cavalry mustn't ride on the footpath. If you 
 were to drive your car there as you say, without 
 swerving or holding hard, you mustn't have a foot- 
 man behind, but a coroner in livery." 
 
 " I see no reason to revise my judgment," re- 
 plied the magistrate, " even in the cases you have 
 so facetiously adduced. There is little difference 
 between the highwayman who takes your money, 
 and the footpads you mention, who delay you on 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 157 
 
 the road, and rob you of your time by the same 
 process of putting you in bodily fear, either for 
 their persons or your own. The penalty, whether 
 inflicted by a pistol bidlet in the first case, or by a 
 horse's hoof in the second, is justly incun'ed by the 
 sufferer's own act and deed, and he must abide the 
 issue. So as I said before, the course of law — " 
 
 " Must be sharp coursing indeed," said Sir Mark, 
 " when your worship is the tryer. A stout hare 
 with a fair start may get aw^ay fi-om the best of the 
 long dogs ; but the more law you give, the w^orse 
 chance of saving one's flix." 
 
 " He is not so severe as he pretends," said Grace, 
 earnestly addressing the Baronet ; " indeed he is 
 not. To hear him talk, you would take him for a 
 .Judge JefFeries. But he always does justice to 
 every one but himself." 
 
 " I am Sony, Grace," said the magistrate in a 
 severe tone, " that a child of mine should indulge 
 in such a speech without perceiving that it involves 
 a serious censure on her parent. I never j)retend 
 to dischaj-ge my duty by threatening when I ought 
 to punish. Ill indeed would it become me by 
 
158 TYLNEY HALL* 
 
 undue lenity to impeach the mildness of those 
 laws which have been framed by the equity, the 
 wisdom, and the humanity, of the three estates of 
 the realm. As such, I am imperiously bound to 
 dispense their pains and penalties according to 
 the letter, without stint or extenuation, fear or 
 favour. And I trust I may be forgiven for saying 
 that I have invariably dealt the same impartial 
 measure to all—high or low, rich or poor." 
 
 " Why truly," said Sir Mai*k, considerately step- 
 ping in to the rescue of poor Grace, who looked 
 distressed at her father's rebuke, " I should be 
 very sorry to fall into your worshipful hands with 
 no better defence than my Baronet's patent." 
 
 " Sir Mark, I am deeply obliged by so flatter- 
 ing an opinion," said the Justice, with a grave bow 
 and a grim smile, " which I hope I shall continue 
 to deserve while I have the honour to remain in 
 the commission. Alike unshaken by popular cla- 
 mour or private prejudice, the terrors — the whole- 
 some terrors — of the law shall never be frittered 
 away in my hands by mistaken mitigations. Mercy 
 to the individual is cruelty to society." 
 
TYLNKY HALL. 169^ 
 
 " And mercy to society is cruelty to the indivi- 
 dual," said Sir Mark gaily, "when it deprives a 
 gouty prisoner of the usual visits of an old friend 
 and a young favourite. You are sadly missed, 
 Grace, at the Hall ; old Deborah has no one to 
 ask after her asthma, old Kalph the gardener has 
 nobody to gossip with him about his flowers, and 
 Ralph's old master has nobody to sing songs to 
 him like a May nightingale.'*'' 
 
 " I have neither forgotten the Hall nor its kind 
 inhabitants,''* replied Grace, " though I may have 
 seemed a little remiss. I ought indeed to have 
 enquired before after my young friends. The bold 
 Ringwood, who used to furnish me with birds for 
 my aviary; and the studious Raby, who culled 
 and copied out for me the prettiest poems ; and 
 last, not least, your Sindbad of a nephew, who en- 
 tertained me vrith endless stories of sharks and fire- 
 flies, and Maroons and rock -snakes, and alligators, 
 and the beautiful Quadroons." 
 
 " They are running riot, Grace, I suspect, like 
 other young collegians," said Sir Mark, " getting 
 learning into their heads by day, and wine into 
 
160 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 their heads by night ; sowing wild oats and so- 
 forth, with an ingo now and then at the old battle- 
 royal of Town and Gown." 
 
 " The more disgrace to the proctors," remarked 
 the magistrate, " who are invested with the power 
 of repressing such disorders. What signifies it 
 that the University has statutes of her own, if 
 they be not enforced ? Expulsion and rustication 
 become nominal punishments, mere nursery bug- 
 bears, and Alma Mater herself appears like a 
 silly indulgent mother, who spoils her children by 
 sparing the rod. For my own part, if 1 were a 
 proctor — " 
 
 " You'd make a rare whipper-in no doubt," said 
 the Baronet, laughing, " and Madcap, and Folly, 
 and Frolic, and Thoughtless, and the rest of the 
 puppies, would often run yelping along w^ith their 
 stems between their gaskins. But we are come 
 to the cross-roads, and yonder is the old finger- 
 post, pointing with one hand towards Tylney, and 
 with the other to Hawksley, like a great staring 
 hawbuck giving one news of the fox. As a mas- 
 ter of hounds, the field ought to follow my lead, 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 16l 
 
 which is towards the Hall and the venison-pasty 
 and other oddments that have been prepared fot 
 dinner. Such old friends as Mr. and Miss Rivers, 
 will not stand on ceremony, and object to try 
 my covers, without the meet being advertised a 
 fortnight before -hand." 
 
 " We should have much pleasure in accepting 
 the invitation," returned the magistrate, adopting 
 the royal pronoun in behalf of Grace and himself, 
 " but till we have appeased the cravings of justice 
 in this bloody business at Hazel Bridge, we have 
 no other appetite, and we must decline with great 
 regret the hospitality of the Hall. There are 
 twelve men still to re-examine, and we have issued 
 waiTants against seven more." 
 
 " Well, God send them a good dehverance," said 
 Sir Mark, " which I believe is a legal prayer, and 
 so I wish your worship good day. As for you, 
 Grace," he continued, laying his hand on her 
 shoulder with the fondness of a father, " you're like 
 a bait hung over the Tenth Commandment, to trap 
 me into coveting what belongs to my neighbour. 
 
16i TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 I forgot to tell you I have a sister coming home to 
 the Hall, who will love you as much as I do, as 
 sure as she belongs to the Tyrrels. So if you will 
 not visit me, you can call on Aer— besides the 
 Oxford fence-months will soon be over, and my 
 boys will be again about the forest." 
 
 " I hope to be amongst the first. Sir Mark, to 
 welcome your sister's aiTival, " and Grace slightly 
 blushed as she spoke, adding with some emotion, 
 " and I shall treasure her love the more, as I have 
 never known the blessing of a mother's." 
 
 A general shaking of hands ensued, and the 
 Baronet remounted Sorrel, who speedily carried 
 him to the high road, just in time to be amused 
 with an equipage which must have ludicrously 
 answered an innkeeper's summons for a " first turn 
 out." It was a neat postchaise, anything but neat 
 in itself, even if it had not been littered all over 
 with trunks, and baskets, and bandboxes ; and it 
 was drawn by two horses — a rusty black, and a 
 dirty white, who seemed running a dead heat, 
 though one trotted and the other cantered. As for 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 163 
 
 the postillion, he looked as if he literally farmed 
 the post-horse duty, for with a professional blue 
 jacket and boots, he wore the straw^ hat and the 
 velveteens of a plough-boy. In lieu of a whip he 
 carried a hazel stick, with which he occasionally 
 belaboured the rusty black, whose heels seemed to 
 possess all the grease that w'as wanted for the 
 wheels — while ever and anon a bundle of tartan 
 popped out of the near window, and exhorted the 
 driver to make more speed, with the promise of " a 
 saxpence to himsel." Instead of the pace getting 
 better, however, it decreased, till at last the wretched 
 over-driven cattle moved almost as slowly as those 
 long-tailed black post-horses wherewith we post to 
 eternity. Besides, at every fresh Scotch appeal from 
 the window, the postillion, if so he might be called, 
 pulled up to explain why he could go no faster. 
 
 " I tellee, missus, the meare's leame and 
 can't goo much fudder. She be fazzy, and it beant 
 no use to whup she." 
 
 The Baronet was fain, therefore, to ride a-head, 
 and leave these pilgrims to their progress, which 
 was so tedious that the milestones — described by 
 
164 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 Sheridan as the most unsociable of all things, for 
 you never see two of them together, — even the 
 unsociable milestones seemed to keep each other 
 at an unusual distance. 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 165 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 •'The Campbells are coming, hurrah, hurrah !" 
 
 Old Ballad. 
 
 O relieve me, or I shall lose my hearing ; 
 Y'ou have raised a fury up into her tongue ; 
 A parliament of women could not make 
 Such a confused noise as that she utters. 
 
 Green's Tu Quoque. 
 
 The Baronet had been at home about half an hour, 
 and old Deborah had just admmistered to him a 
 biscuit and a bumper of Madeira, by way of 
 removing the wire edge of his appetite, which 
 had been well honed and stropped by his morning 
 ride, when the sharp eye of the housekeeper hap- 
 pened to glance through a window which over- 
 looked the avenue. Her attention was immediately 
 
166 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 fixed by some object moving along between the 
 stately chesnuts which hned the approach to the 
 Hall, but as yet too distant for her sight to define 
 its character ; at last it came near enough for her 
 to venture on a definite announcement, in her 
 usual style, her asthma literally breaking the news 
 she communicated. 
 
 "Your honour there's a post — chaise and Oh 
 Lord !— driven by a plough— boy in a blue — jacket 
 and top — boots and, mercy on us — the oddest 
 looking woman — alive in a harlequin cloak — 
 reaching out of window — and waving — her arms 
 —like mad !" 
 
 Sir Mark, looking out in the same direction, re- 
 cognized at a glimpse the identical equipage which 
 he had left on the high-road going so deliberately ; 
 but the driver, like a true jockey, had partly saved 
 his horses for a rush at the end ; and they now 
 came smoking along as if literally boiling a gallop, 
 to the visible terror of the woman in tartan, whose 
 arms were working at the front window like the 
 limbs of a telegraph. Onward he dashed, looking 
 a winner all the way, to the Hall-door, where he 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 167 
 
 pulled up with a suddenness that sent the two 
 horses and the Scotch woman on their haunches, 
 the shock at the same moment breaking the cords 
 of a trunk which had been riding on the roof: the 
 box immediately pitched off and burst open, and 
 scattered such a quantity of miscellaneous articles, 
 that like the fisherman in the Arabian Nights, 
 when the geni emerged from the chest, every body 
 wondered how such a bulk could have been con- 
 tained in such a box. And as, in the same stor}-, 
 there came out in the first place "a very thick 
 smoke which formed a great mist," so out of the 
 Scotchwoman's trunk there ascended a dense cloud 
 of dust, which appeared to have escaped from a 
 large bag or poke of oatmeal, that had been des- 
 tined to remind one Mr. Donald Cameron of the 
 Land of Cakes. Unluckily, most of it had dis- 
 persed in air, except one little residue, which a 
 broken greybeard of Glenlivet had converted into 
 a sort of brose : in the same fluid floated a dozen 
 finnin baddies, w^hile part of the stream served to 
 unbleach a web of home-made linen, which had 
 unfurled itself on the gravel. A bran-new "braw 
 
168 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 blue bonnet," intended for the sandy sconce of a 
 nephew apprenticed to a London baker, pitched 
 by chance on the head of Whop, the bull terrier, 
 who was barking at the catastrophe, and who in 
 resentment worried the cap into ribbons. Torment 
 and Teazer, two old fox -hounds who were at large 
 on their parole, gobbled up a mutton-ham in a 
 twinkling ; and while Jupiter bolted a Sunday 
 mutch, accidentally filled with real Scotch marma- 
 lade, Venus made short work with a batch of 
 short-cake, ornamented in sugar-plums. In the 
 middle of the medley sprawled a huge body of 
 clothes, with silk and gingham arms, and worsted 
 and cotton legs. It was, in short, a total wreck, — 
 at sight of which, as Lord Byron says, 
 
 " Then rose from earth to heaven, the wild farewell, — " 
 
 for Tibbie Campbell, our tartan woman, could not 
 have set up a louder funeral wail, or coronach, if 
 Mac Galium More himself had just expired, with 
 all his tail. 
 
 In the meantime, the Baronet hurried down to 
 the liall-door, and received his sister in his aims 
 as she alighted from the chaise. 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 169 
 
 " Egad, Kate," he exclaimed, after a hearty em- 
 brace and welcome, "what with that bang and 
 smother, yom* vessel seemed to fire her own salute 
 on her anival. Why, I rode a good mile on your 
 track without owning to it ; though I ought to 
 have challenged at the ^harlequin cloak," as Debby 
 calls it, as coming from the North." 
 
 " And I hope my kind old Deborah keeps her 
 health," said the sister, affectionately shaking the 
 withered hand of the housekeeper, who could 
 only reply by an hysterical cackle and a low 
 curtsey. 
 
 " The Scotchwoman, brother, is a very old and 
 faithful servant of mine, for whom I must beg 
 house-room at the Hall." 
 
 " Use the Hall at your pleasure, Kate," returned 
 the Baronet, " barring the dog-kennels and the 
 stables. All the rest you may consider as your 
 own manor, provided you'll join Deborah here 
 with your tartan woman in the deputation. But 
 after a long stage, you'll be glad of a bite and a 
 sup, and so let us go up stairs. But first, do me 
 
 VOL. I. I 
 
170 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 the favour to take up the Scotchwoman, for she's 
 within hearing of the ladies' kennel, and I shouldn't 
 like them to learn her style of giving tongue." 
 
 The Scotchwoman, in truth, was literally realis- 
 ing Sir Mark's description in more senses than 
 one; for amongst her general cargo there hap- 
 pened to be some dried reindeer tongues, which her 
 old sweetheart, the mate of the William Wallace, 
 had imported from Riga to Dundee. As they were 
 of the make and consistence of small cudgels, they 
 were the most natural weapons at hand to be pelted 
 successively at Jupiter, and Venus, and Torment, 
 and Teazer, and Whop ; who, with the instinctive 
 sagacity of dogs, immediately galloped off with the 
 missiles, that they might not serve for another dis- 
 charge. At the same time she favoured the post- 
 boy with a volley of hard words, in the dialect of 
 Fifeshire ; to which he answered with an occasional 
 shot, in the dialect of Berkshire, of course aggra- 
 vating the misunderstanding. 
 
 " Wae worth that fule body, the maister at the 
 inn," cried Tibbie, " for letting yon wiselike cannie 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 171 
 
 lad gang aff the saddle, and trusting his naigs to a 
 muckle havering gowk, wha kens nae mair aboot 
 guiding them than a bom natural !" 
 
 " Ecod, she do wag her tongue moightily ; but 
 I doant moind she," remai*ked Jolterhead, looking 
 stoical with aU his might ; and quietly pocketing 
 a liberal guerdon, along with the hire of the chaise, 
 away he rattled again, pursued by a parting bene- 
 diction. 
 
 '* Ay, gang yer gate, the unchancy DeeviPs 
 buckie that ye are — I'm thinking it'll no be lang or 
 ye coup the crans a'thegither, — and nae harm 
 dune, gin the aivers suld ding out yer harns !" 
 
 " Whisht, Tibbie woman," said her mistress, 
 interposing, " you're wanted to take the things up 
 to my room ; and never fash yourself about your 
 own gear, for it shall all be made good." 
 
 " You're vary kind, my leddy," answered Tibbie, 
 " but it's ill makin a silken pouch o' a sow's lug. 
 Div ye think, mem, there's ony livin body in 
 England can make short-breed, forbye marmalade — 
 or div ye think the change-houses a'thegither baud 
 sae muckle as ae mutchkin o' Glenlivit — or div ye 
 
 i2 
 
172 TYLNEY HALL/ 
 
 think the hail mantj-makers in Lunnon can fashion 
 siccan a mutch as yon illfaured hound is wearin 
 in's wame ? Made gude ! by my troth it's gay an 
 hkely to come to pass, when the wind blaws back 
 the meal from a' the airts intill yon poke. Made 
 gude, indeed ! In coorse, Mem, there's blue bon- 
 nets to be gotten aff windle-straes for the gatherin ; 
 and nae doot mutton-hams is to be pickit aff the 
 grund like chuckie-stanes. There's wabs o' claith 
 too, and napery, I'se warrent, amang thae English, 
 wha toil not neither do they spin, ony mair than 
 King Solomon's lilies. But as ye say, they're a' 
 to be made gude." — So saying she applied herself 
 to the removal of the packages, while the Baronet 
 and his sister proceeded up stairs. 
 
 " And now, welcome again to the Hall, Kate," 
 he said, kindly leading her into the drawing-room, 
 " and I'm glad at heart you've run a ring back 
 again to the old house, where you were roused." 
 
 " I'm thinking, Mark," she replied smiling, " that 
 the old house has been getting itself an awful iU 
 name since I left. Probably the ghost of Sir 
 Walter has been playing its fearsome pranks be- 
 
TYLNEY HALL, 173 
 
 yond the common ; but the postiUion who should 
 have driven us the last stage, fairly jumped out of 
 the saddle at the mere mention of Tylney Hall ; 
 and as he resolutely refused to ride a foot in that 
 direction, he got a discharge on the spot ; and we 
 were compelled to accept the senices of the 
 strange substitute you saw." 
 
 " Unlucky Joe, for a pony," exclaimed Sir 
 Mark, with a vehement slap of his hand on his 
 buckskins, " the more luck, Kate, for you that he 
 bolted ; for I've booked myself to ride over him 
 roughshod. But now I think of it, you married 
 into Scotland before Bedlamite was foaled. Sad 
 changes in the family, Kate, since we parted — first 
 Herbert, and then Bedlamite, and then your hus- 
 band — but don't hang down your head. I forgot, 
 in naming it, that I was putting the loaded collar 
 on you, when I ought to cry, hold up." 
 
 The widow of the Laird of Glencosie really 
 drooped her head, and the tears stood in her eyes 
 at the Baronet's allusion to her losses ; but she re- 
 pressed her emotion, and enquired after her ne- 
 phews, whom she had left as mere children. 
 
174 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 " My dear Kate," said Sir Mark, adopting a 
 confidential tone, " the boys are like my preserves, 
 both a pleasure and a plague. YouVe seen a hen 
 when some Cockney ignoramus has furnished her 
 with a hatch of eggs, half ducks and half chickens ; 
 the chickens will not take to the water, and the 
 duckhngs will not take to the land — and so it is 
 with my two sons* You cannot get Ringwood 
 into learning, or Raby out of it— and there I am 
 on the edge of the pond, trying to keep the brood 
 together. If Ringwood would read a little, and 
 Raby would sport a little, it would be a good 
 cross. Between ourselves, I wish they were more 
 like St. Kitts, but you won't know him by that 
 nomination — I mean Herbert's brown colt, — and 
 a promising colt he is." 
 
 The conversation was here interrupted by the 
 entrance of Deborah, with refreshments for the 
 traveller. 
 
 " If you please, Madam," — she said, with a 
 smile crumpling her aged features—" the Scotch 
 — servant is in a towering — passion in the kitchen 
 — ^because we don't— give her what — she wants, 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 175 
 
 but Lord help us — ^nobody can make her out — it 
 was something about— four hoors — and a few kail." 
 
 "Poor Tibbie is hungry, Deborah," said the 
 lady, '* and was asking about dinner time, and a 
 little broth. By the way, you may tell the cook 
 from me, not to let Tibbie meddle with the 
 cookery, or she will make kail of every thing ; and 
 I mind my brother is no so fond of spoon-meat 
 as they are in the North." 
 
 " Not I, by the Lord Harry," said Sir Mark, 
 ^' I'm for nothing but knife and fork. So lock 
 up the pump-handle, Debby, and keep an eye to 
 the boilers, or we shall have an ounce of mutton 
 swimming in a tureen of barley-water — I've heard 
 of their Scotch broths." 
 
 " They're not so much amiss either," said the 
 sister, " when you get used to them." 
 
 " May be not," said Sir Mark, " with something 
 to take after them, and provided you're only going 
 to sit in your arm-chair. But to fill your barrel 
 with broth before riding to fox-hounds, you might 
 as well give your hunter a bucket of water to help 
 him to gallop. Take my word for it, Kate, that's 
 
176 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 the very reason why there's so little fox-hunting in 
 Scotland." 
 
 " You would find some more formidable reasons, 
 brother," said the lady, " in the shape of moun- 
 tains, and lakes, and mosses. And now, Deborah, 
 I w^ll trouble you to show me to my chamber, and 
 to send Tibbie to assist me in changing this dusty 
 dress before dinner-time." 
 
 Accordingly Deborah ushered the lady, whom 
 for the ftiture we shall call Mrs. Hamilton, to her 
 room ; where she found the Scotchwoman actively 
 engaged in unpacking the various trunks, and on 
 uncording every one of which, she gave vent to a 
 fresh lamentation over the fate of her own chest. 
 Tibbie Campbell was not much given to the melt- 
 ing mood; but her eyes, though not absolutely 
 raining, were filled with a sort of Scotch mist ; and 
 never perhaps, during the forty years of her life, 
 had she felt so depressed and downhearted as at 
 the present moment, when her feelings seemed to 
 be playing a medley of "Ha Til mi tulidh" — 
 " Lochaber no more " — " Dowf and dowie " — 
 " Waly waly " — and other national Songs of Soitow. 
 
TYLNEY HALI,. 177 
 
 " Wae's me," she ejaculated, " it needs nae 
 second-sight to ken the upshot — I'll be warld- 
 weaiy in less than nae time. To think o' comin 
 fra bonnie Glencosie, and kith an kin, intil an 
 unco place where it's no possible to say to a livin 
 creture ' come gie's yeVe cracks' — Robbie Crushoe, 
 puir fallow, wasna waur afF amang a wheen 
 sawvidges. Fient a word can I speak down bye 
 but the hizzies maun a' be glowrin and girnin at 
 me, like bom gomerils, and cryin 'what's yer 
 wull ? — what's yer wull ?' " 
 
 " Tibbie, lass," said her mistress, in a tone of 
 considerable kindness, " you're wiser than to look 
 for a duck-egg in a corbie's nest ; and you must 
 not expect to hear the Scotch language from an 
 English tongue. As for the chest, as your import- 
 ation has been wrecked, 1 will furnish yoii with a 
 cargo for exportation— and your friends at Glen- 
 cosie shall no say of you, that out of sight is out of 
 mind." 
 
 With this comfortable promise she judiciously 
 tempered the troubles of the serving-woman, wlio, 
 
 I 3 
 
1,78 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 nevertheless, could not help sighing as she turned 
 over lace caps, and silk gowns, and other articles 
 of female adornment, so spotless and splendid in 
 comparison with her own ruined finery; which 
 doubtless, on coming southward, she had contem- 
 plated in the same spirit as Winifred Jenkins, when 
 she wrote about the yellow^ trolopee — " God he 
 nose what havoc I shall make among the mail 
 sects when I make my first appearance in this 
 killing collar." However, she apphed herself to 
 her duties as tirewoman; which she performed 
 tolerably, considering the perturbation of her mind; 
 for she only thrust a pin into her mistress's shoulder, 
 while thinking of a certain trysting thorn at Glen- 
 cosie, and perfiimed a handkerchief with sal vola- 
 tile instead of lavender, during a mental visit to 
 Glencosie Kirk — an image associated with a sound 
 which was ringing in her ears. 
 
 " Od, Sirs," she exclaimed, " but ye guide 
 matters an unco gate in the south. I've aye been 
 tauld the EngUsh are no sae keen to harken till 
 the meenister as some ither folk — ^but Lorsh keep 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 179 
 
 US, Mem, religion maun hae the worst o't, where 
 the kirk-bell begins j owing just when a' body's 
 ganging till their four-hoors." 
 
 " The ringing you hear, Tibbie," said her mis- 
 tress, smiling, "is nothing but the dinner-bell, 
 calling me to a service where every one is their 
 own minister." 
 
 So saying, she descended and rejoined her 
 brother at the dinner table, where the conversa- 
 tion, as may easily be supposed, took a retrospec- 
 tive turn, in which Herbert, Glencosie, Bedlamite, 
 Ringwood, Raby, and St. Kitts, were the principal 
 subjects. The future, however, was not over- 
 looked by the Baronet ; who, in the fullness of his 
 heart, confided to his sister his matrimonial pro- 
 ject concerning Ringwood and Grace Rivers, to 
 which she replied by a judicious admonition against 
 match-making ; for she had experienced some of 
 the evils of enforced marriages in her own union 
 with the northern Laird — who was said to have 
 courted the mother by way of winning the daugh- 
 ter. 
 
 " For the love of heaven, Mark," she said, 
 
180 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 " neither make nor meddle in marriage ; but let the 
 young people select their own favourites. Love is 
 a plant of deep growth and root ; and he is a bad 
 gardener who puts it into the head, instead of let- 
 ting it spring from the heart. If you are so fond 
 of Grace Rivers as you say, you can do the dear 
 girl no better kindness than to let her aifections take 
 their own natural course. A maiden's heart, w^ith 
 all its sensitive feelings and fancies, is like one of 
 her drawers full of delicate laces, and gossamer 
 muslins and gauzes, — fabrics of too tender a tex- 
 ture to be turned over and rumpled by the rough 
 hand of a father or a brother. Remember the 
 appeal of poor Polly in the Beggar's Opera — 
 
 " Can love be controlled by advice? 
 Will Cupid our mother's obey?" 
 
 A serious question, Mark, which my own heart 
 has been answering in the negative for these twelve 
 years past." 
 
 " I do not know," said the Baronet, " but that 
 you may be right about Grace and her father. 
 To be sure the old cast-iron Justice would sig-n 
 her marriage mittimus and send her off to church 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 181 
 
 just as he'd commit a gipsy-jade to the county 
 jail; and maybe with a special constable for a 
 bridesman. No, Kate, I'm not for coupling-up 
 young people by the neck, when they're perhaps 
 not fitter to run together than Lightning and 
 Lounger, or a greyhound with a turnspit : but as 
 to Ringwood and Grace, you might search the 
 kingdom for a better match, whether for age, or 
 shape, or temper." 
 
 " Well, brother," said Mrs. Hamilton, laughing, 
 '' I will only remind you of a saying which is, or 
 ought to be, a Scotch proverb — ' It's ill to begin 
 bigging at the tap o' the lum.' It's very possible 
 that Grace may prefer Raby to Ringwood, or Wal- 
 ter to either, and, as the trout said to the fisher- 
 man, when he fell into the milldam, * where are 
 you then ?'" 
 
 " Your hedge is a stiff one to get over," said 
 Sir Mark, with equal good humour, " but, as the 
 fanner's mare said, when he tried to get before the 
 deer, ' It's an event not likely to come off.' Ring- 
 wood against the field for a thousand — and here 
 comes a backer who would stand half of the bet." 
 
182 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 The personage thus alluded to, unceremoniously 
 entered the room as the Baronet spoke ; he made 
 a bow, indeed, when introduced to Mrs. Hamilton, 
 and then, with a familiar nod to Sir Mark, he drew 
 a chair to the table, and helped himself to a glass 
 of claret, which he immediately drank off with 
 a deep sigh of enjoyment. A second followed, 
 and then a third, before he made answer to the 
 Baronet's enquiry whether he had met with any 
 sport. 
 
 " Damned a bit," he replied, first yawning, and 
 then diving his hands into his pockets — stretching 
 out his legs — and looking downward, in the very 
 attitude of the nobleman in the second plate of 
 Marriage A-la-mode. "Met at Hawksley — a blank. 
 Then to Foxcote— blank again; Windmills Grange 
 — ditto ; ditto at Golder's Gorse. Away to Hol- 
 lington — found a vixen, — and whipped off." 
 
 " And the field," enquired Sir Mark, " were 
 there many with the button ? " 
 
 " Not a soul but the Farmers and myself^— bar- 
 ring young Twigg ; a queer one by Jove. Rode 
 a bay pony veiy short in the legs, and wore a 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 183 
 
 scarlet coat very long in the skirts — looked devilish 
 like general post riding proxy for twopenny." 
 
 " Now I think of it," said the Baronet, " I re- 
 member his father saying he had taken to hunting 
 ever since being at Epping Forest on an Easter 
 Monday. By the way, Kate, I forgot to tell you 
 we have some distant relations settled very near 
 us — a grandson of old Theophilus Tyrrel." 
 
 " As game a fellow. Madam," added the visitor, 
 " as ever laid the long odds. Knew old Theo- 
 philus well— met him often at Newmarket — and 
 meant to do the civil thing by his great grandson, 
 Twigg junior ; but it's no go — he'll never be dab 
 at anything ! Lent him my cats last Friday for a 
 rabbiting, and he worked them with collar and 
 string. Killed only one old doe rabbit — and con- 
 trived to hang the dog ferret for it, as dead as 
 Theodore Gardelle ! " 
 
 " I'm afraid," said Sir Mark, shaking his head, 
 " the family will do little credit to the Tyrrels, 
 when it comes to sporting. As for Twigg him- 
 self, he won t stand within two yards of a horse ; 
 and even then he watches its heels, as if the animal 
 
184 Ti'LNEY HALL. 
 
 had said to him, ' consider yourself kicked.' But 
 come, fill up a bumper, and lefs have the old 
 standing toast of the hunt — 'here's Pitt in the 
 cabinet, and Fox in the field.' "" 
 
 " Here's Pitt and Fox, then," said the guest, 
 taking off his bumper ; " and now for another," he 
 added, as he closed the door after Mrs. Hamilton, 
 who had taken the toast as a hint to retire, " 'here's 
 to all maids, wives, and widows.' Deserves three 
 times three,'' he said, giving his empty glass a 
 flourish in the air, " but want Ringwood to give 
 us the hips. When will he be home fiom that 
 d — d University ?" 
 
 " After Hilary Tenii," said Sir Mark, " which is 
 about the end of March." 
 
 " Confound Hilary, and his terms to boot ! " 
 cried the other, " might know better than to keep 
 young fellows haltered up in his old musty stalls 
 in the hunting season. Don't see why all the 
 learning can't be done while the nags are summer- 
 ing at gi'ass; but guess how it is— old Hilary 
 don't hunt. A regular waddler — weighs sixteen 
 stone — double chin— buz wig — shovel-hat, and 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 1B5 
 
 all that. A thousand pities, though ! —think there's 
 an otter in the Willow Brook — know there's a 
 badger in Warner's Wood." 
 
 The conversation now took a turn of little in- 
 terest except to the two sportsmen engaged in it, 
 consisting of a series of such nan'atives as may be 
 found daily under the usual heading of " Extraor- 
 dinary Fox-chase," or '^ Remarkable Run with 
 Mr. So-and-So's hounds." Instead, therefore, of 
 circumstantially drawing Cubsy Cover — finding 
 at Barkham — losing at Foilham — making a cast 
 towards Sniffington — nmning him to East Split- 
 ting — then to West Splitting — throwing up again 
 at Botherham — challenging at the Hand-post — 
 rattling off to Bumpington — changing him at 
 Shufflebury — trying back to Puzzleworth — hark 
 forward again to Skurry Mead — viewing him at 
 High Squinny — hard pressing him through Squashy 
 Bottom, leaving Tidy Hall to the left— making in 
 a direct line for Killingham — through Furrov/ 
 Field, Clayworth, Splashbury, Muddington, Dust- 
 worth, Great Purley, and lattle Pm-ley, Upper 
 Spraining, and Lower Spraining — one hour and 
 
186 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 forty-five minutes — and losing him up a drain at 
 Long Nikey; — instead of bestowing all this te- 
 diousness on the reader, we will give a brief 
 description of Sir MarFs famihar. 
 
 Mr. Edward Somerville, commonly called " Squire 
 Ned,'' was one of those cheerful, ingenious, oblig- 
 ing persons, with a host of little accomplishments, 
 who, like Will Wimble, are sure to find a welcome 
 in every house. In fact, he had the run of the 
 parish, from the fireside of the Manor House and 
 Rector}'-, to the chimney-comer of the small 
 farmer. As the popular character well expressed 
 of him, he was everybody's friend, and nobody's 
 enemy but his own ; the latter clause referring to 
 various personal injuries which he had accident- 
 ally incurred at his own hands. He had lost the 
 sight of his left eye through some experiments in 
 percussion firing, (an invention time has since 
 ripened,) — and a vermin trap of his own construc- 
 tion had snapped ofi* two of his fingers ; his left 
 arm had been fractured by a kick from a colt of 
 his own breaking ; and he limped a little in walk- 
 ing, through falling with a scaffold of his own 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 187 
 
 contrivance, while superintending the erection of 
 a cottage on an original plan. But of the cottage 
 more anon. In the field he was invaluable — no- 
 body could find a hare-^mark down a cock — or 
 make a cast, so well as the Squire : and he was 
 almost as indispensable at the Hall, particulaiiy 
 when the Baronet had a fit of the gout, which 
 only allowed him to kill his fox at second-hand in 
 Ned's description. Moreover, he could listen as 
 well as talk ; and, above all, was an indefatigable 
 player at backgammon or cribbage. Sir Mark's 
 favourite games, and at which Ringwood, Raby, 
 and even the Creole, were too apt to degenerate 
 into " sleeping partners." 
 
 It was presumed that Ned was either a bachelor 
 or a widower, for nobody ever ascertained which ; 
 all that could be learned from him was, that 
 " when he put on his hat he covered his whole 
 family." Indeed, he was never known to be 
 visited by any one who claimed the remotest 
 relationship ; — ^but in default of kin he centred his 
 whole affection on Ringwood, whom he loved 
 with as much love as some economical fathers 
 would make sufiice for a long dozen of sons. 
 
188 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 The curious were equally at fault about his 
 means of living; he had bought a few acres of 
 freehold, on which he had built himself a cottage, 
 and he paid ready money for every thing ; which 
 was all that was know^n with regard to his revenue. 
 As for the cottage, it was a perfect Merlin's cabinet 
 of mechanical contrivances, such as "open sesame" 
 doors, self-acting window^s, spring closets, and 
 nick-nacks in clock work ; in short, it contained 
 such a Century, or rather Millennium of Inventions, 
 that if each had claimed its gold or silver medal 
 from the Society of Arts, the Arthur Aikin of that 
 period must have gone with all his firm into the 
 Gazette. One part of the building, however, still 
 held Ned's ingenuity at defiance, namely, an un- 
 compromising chimney^ the draft of which, accord- 
 ing to the Polish game of drafts, was apt to take 
 backwards, and discharge all the smoke into his 
 sitting-room. In consequence, to the great amuse- 
 ment of the neighbourhood, the refi'actory pot was 
 seen about once a month with a new cowl on its 
 head, each diflering quite as much in shape and 
 fashion from its predecessor as the last new bon- 
 net from Paris. 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 189 
 
 To return to the Hall. After killing a score of 
 foxes over again, the Baronet and the Squire ad- 
 journed to the drawing-room, where, after tea, 
 Mrs. Hamilton retiring early, they betook them- 
 selves to one of the favouiite games ; nor did they 
 give over throwing dice, and taking up blots, and 
 taking off' men, till towards the smallest of the 
 small hours ; — for like Gargantua and Pantagruel, 
 in Rabelais, they had appetites not to be satisfied 
 by any ordinary quantity of gammons. 
 
190 TYLNEY HALL, 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 " She is far from the land "- 
 
 Moobe's Irish Melodies. 
 
 " One day whilst under sail we were becalmed near a little Island, 
 even almost with the surface of the water, which resembled a green 
 meadow. The Captain ordered his sails to be furled, and permitted 
 such persons as had a mind to land upon the Island, amongst whom I 
 was one. But while we were diverting ourselves with eating and 
 drinking, and recovering ourselves from the fatigue of the sea, the 
 Island on a sudden trembled and shook us terribly * * * * Pqj. 
 what we took for an Island, was only the back of a whale." 
 
 Sindbad's First Voyage. 
 
 " As the day is bright, and the air mild," said 
 Mrs. Hamilton, when she rose the next morning 
 from the breakfast-table, " I should enjoy a stroll 
 in the pleasure-grounds and the Park ; but I'll no 
 trespass on your time, Mark, for I shall take Tibbie 
 with me; the poor body will die else of suppressed 
 Scotch." 
 
 Accordingly she sent a summons by the foot- 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 191 
 
 man for Tibbie, who quickly made her appeai*ance 
 ill her usual morning-dress, part of which, indeed, 
 belonged to the night ; namely, a short white 
 jacket, and a cap, the strings of which, however, 
 were now untied, allowing two lappets to hang 
 down by the side of her face, like the ears of a 
 beagle ; her lower garment was a dark blue petti- 
 coat, and as for her shoes, she held them in her 
 right hand, and her stockings were in her left. 
 
 " Hoot awa', Tibbie," exclaimed her mistress, 
 somewhat disconcerted at the apparition, " ye 
 ought to have minded that you're no at Glencosie 
 the noo. — Didn't I forewarn ye against gangin 
 barefoot, while ye were dressing me this very morn- 
 ing?" 
 
 " It's no my wyte, Mem," replied Tibbie, verj- 
 indignantly, " the flunkie tauld me I was wanted 
 momently — Deil hae me, but I'se gie him a heezie 
 for't — the off-taking ne'er-do-weel ! my certie, he 
 maun be worth his fee, a daundering swankie, that's 
 aye daffin wi' the limmers and taupies — that's a' 
 his darg." 
 
 " Well, well," interrupted her mistress, " enough 
 
192 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 said — you're wanted to walk with me, so go to 
 your busking" — and away padded the Scotch- 
 woman to prepare herself for the promenade. 
 
 " Guineas to shillings," said the Baronet, " it 
 was a trick of Jerry's to hurry up Tibbie in her 
 dishabille : I'll warrant she's as good as a cock at 
 Shrovetide, for 'em to fling at in the kitchen. But, 
 by Jove ! she seems able to hold her own against 
 them all, like an old ram in a dog-kennel ! " 
 
 " No fear of Tibbie among the women," said 
 Mrs. Hamilton, laughing, " if they measure tongues 
 with her, she will have a claymore against a dirk : 
 as for the men, she cowed them all at Glencosie, 
 not excepting the Laird himself. But she's a faith- 
 ful devoted creature ; and to save or serve me 
 would walk on hot ploughshares, ay, as barefoot 
 as you saw her just now." So saying she retired 
 to put on her bonnet and shawl ; and soon after- 
 wards the Baronet, who had watched at the win- 
 dow, saw her walking in the garden, followed by 
 Tibbie in shoes and hose ; the rest of her costume, 
 whatever it might be, even to her cap, being enve- 
 loped in the memorable " Harlequin cloak.'* 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 193 
 
 The alterations which twelve years, as well as 
 the hand of man, had wrought in the pleasure- 
 grounds, fully occupied the attention of Mrs. Ha- 
 milton ; and Tibbie, somewhat dashed by the re- 
 buke and the ridicule which attended her morn- 
 ing debut, walked after her equally silent, and 
 equally ruminative, on the wonderful changes 
 which only four days had effected in all that con- 
 cerned herself. 
 
 At last the lady stopped before some moss- 
 grown fragments of what had once been a sum- 
 mer-house, formerly her favourite retreat, but now 
 in iiiins. As she looked at the masses of brick- 
 work which cumbered the ground, she could not 
 help sighing, and murmuring a reflection on the 
 desolation she surveyed. 
 
 " This then is all that remams of my beautiful 
 summer-house, where I spent so many happy 
 houi's ! — But the pleasure is dead and gone : and 
 it is better, perhaps, that its abode should perish 
 too. Tibbie," she continued, addressing her fol- 
 lower, " you would little think, lass, that yonder 
 
 VOL. I. K 
 
194 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 ruin was once as bonnie a bower for a lady as 
 erer was sung of in an auld-warld ballad." 
 
 There is an old superstition, that a ghost may 
 not speak till it has been spoken to ; and the 
 Scotchwoman's tongue seemed to have been spell- 
 bound by some similar injunction ; for the moment 
 she was thus appealed to, she began to talk like a 
 spirit pressed for time, to say all its say before 
 cock-crow. 
 
 " O mem," she exclaimed, " Gude send there 
 may be nae waur ruining than yon ! We're no 
 come ae blink owre sune ; mortal fut never cam 
 intil a hoos in sairer need o"* a redding-up. Lorsh 
 keep us, the Laird wad be for risin up frae the 
 mouls an' there were sic wastry at Glencosie. As 
 fac's death, I saw yon cheil in the scarlet coatie, 
 and the corded breeks, — the In -wh upper I thmk 
 they ca' him — devoorin the cauld beef, and the 
 loaf-breed, and drinkin yill, nae less, till his par- 
 ritch-time ! And yon siUy doited carline, Debo- 
 rah, to stand lookin on at the fallow without 
 flyting, — no but it wad be fushionless flyting, wi' 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 195 
 
 siccan a hoast. Then there's thae yowlin dowgs 
 out-bye maun hae mair otmeal than wad be a 
 neivefii' the piece to the hale generation o' gaber- 
 lunzies and blue -gowns. Folk say Sir Mark Tirl 
 has gowd by gowpens — but siller has an end to't 
 as weel's a coo's tail— there maun be a down-come 
 — there maun be a down-come." 
 
 " Never fash yourself about the siller, Tibbie," 
 replied her mistress, " I'll answer for its lasting 
 out from one year's end to another." 
 
 " And for my part," answered Tibbie, " 111 no 
 neglect ony thing to baud the gear thegither. As 
 for the In-whupper, I'm thinking I'll mak him as 
 gleg's a gled to sup crowdy ; wi' a taste o' a sower 
 cog at an orra time ! But, O mem ! would it no 
 be a Providential thing, and I'm sure it's my daily 
 peteetion til the Throne of Grace, that He wad 
 send down the hydrophoby amang they wastfu' 
 tykes, and gar ilk ane devoor his neeboiu*, by way 
 o' sunkets ? But the dowgs are naething ! There's 
 thretty naigs for the tod-hunting, for I countit 
 them mysel — mair by token, I never saw sae mony 
 horses thegither but ance, when the cawvalry were 
 
 K 2 
 
190 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 pitting down the meal-mob at Dundee. I'm tauld 
 butcher^meat is at tenpence the pund — ^but, O 
 mem, what maun be the price o' tod's-flesh grantin 
 it ever cam intil an ashet, het or cauld ? 
 
 " If you are wise, Tibbie, woman," said Mrs. 
 Hamilton, " you will not make or meddle with 
 either dogs or horses at Tylney Hall." 
 
 '* Weel," replied Tibbie, adroitly ehanging her 
 point of attack, " folk that will to Cupar maun 
 to Cupar. As weel, aiblins, be eaten out of house 
 and ha' by hounds and horses, as by a wheen up- 
 settin flunkies, and fliskmahoys. The vary fees o' 
 'em wad be a tocher for a laird's daughter ! But 
 the tae half o'lhem shall ken the but frae the ben, 
 or the month's dune, as shure's my name's Caw- 
 mel. I jalouse the huntsman and the in-whuppers 
 havena sae muckle wark out-bye, but that they can 
 stand ahint the chairs, and hand aboot the ashets. 
 Div ye no think, mem, ane of the in-whuppers 
 might be spared whiles to drive the coach ; for in 
 com*se, mem, he can whup horses as weel as 
 dowgs ? " 
 
 In this strain Tibbie's tongue continued to ran 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 197 
 
 on for some time, without any interruption from her 
 mistress, who was not a Httle amused at the whim- 
 sical alterations that were suggested in her brother's 
 household. They had now turned into the park, 
 and were skirting a very extensive sheet of water, 
 which lay between them and the house ; when at 
 an exclamation from Tibbie, the lady looked to- 
 wards the avenue, prepared to see " the King 
 comin or the provost o' Edinbro' at the least." 
 
 In truth a yellow-bodied carriage, with a coach- 
 man and footman in sky-blue-and-orange liveries, 
 a scarlet hammer-cloth, and two grey horses, with 
 ■'^ lots of bright brass bees on the harness," made a 
 considerable glitter in the sunshine, as it swept 
 along towards the Hall. At some distance in the 
 rear, followed a dark green chai'iot, with drab live- 
 ries, drawn by two bays ; the whole equipage 
 bearing the same proportion in splendour to the 
 preceding one, as the Lord Mayor's private car- 
 riage, to that showy gilt gingerbread vehicle, his 
 coach of state. While the Scotchwoman gazed 
 with unfeigned admiration at the procession, her 
 mistress looked w^ith some embaiTassment, first at 
 
198 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 the house, and then at the water, a sheet not very 
 broad, but of considerable length. 
 
 " Oh, Tibbie," she exclaimed, " we are in a 
 pretty dilemma ! Yonder go visitors to the Hall ; 
 and here am I, who ought to meet them, on the 
 wrong side of the lake. It will take half an hour's 
 walking to get round it at either end." 
 
 " Never fash yoursel, mem, aboot that," replied 
 Tibbie, " while there's yon bit boat to the fore. 
 I'll tak ye o'er in no time ; I ken that wark weel ! 
 Mony's the time I've been wi' Saundy in the coble, 
 puir fallow, before he went to the sea." 
 
 So saying she jumped into the boat with great agi- 
 lity, and cast oiF a rope at the stern by which it was 
 made fast to a post on the shore ; the wind at the 
 same moment making a sail of her " Harlequin 
 cloak," and blowing the skiff at the rate of nine 
 knots an hour towards the middle of the water. 
 
 " I have no much faith," muttered Mrs. Hamil- 
 ton, *' in Tibbie's seamanship. But for God's sake, 
 what's the matter ? " she called out to her ferry - 
 woman, seeing that she wrung her hands and went 
 through other pantomimical signals of distress. 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 199 
 
 " Oh mem, oh my leddy,'' shouted Tibbie, 
 " there's nae skulls ; and the ill-faured boat is 
 chained wi"* a chain at its neb ! Here I maun sit 
 till doomsday, gin I canna brak the chain, or pu"" 
 up the bottom o' the loch ! " 
 
 " Deuce take the woman, with her boating," said 
 Mrs. Hamilton, " she's moored there fast enough !" 
 The little vessel indeed, after swinging round, had 
 brought up with its head to the wind; and there, 
 in the stem, sat the Tartan woman, a second Lady 
 of the Lake, 
 
 " With eyes upraised and lips apart, 
 Like monument of Grecian art," 
 
 and particularly that monument associated witl^ 
 " sedet aetemumque sedebit.'' 
 
 " There's nothing to be done,'' said Mrs. Hamil- 
 ton, " but to sit steady till I can send somebody 
 from the Hall." 
 
 " Od mem," shouted Tibbie, " Fm gayanliketo 
 sit steady when there's a hole in the boat, that lets 
 a' the water win in the moment I tak off my 
 thoom. Lord' sake, mem, dinna be lang sending ! 
 But I'm thinkin, amang a' thae braw court gentry, 
 
200 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 ye'll mind nae mair o' puir Tibbie Cawmel than o' 
 a pickmaw." 
 
 " I would as soon forget a mermaid, if I had 
 seen one,''' answered Mrs. Hamilton ; and, in spite 
 of the saying that " women and cows should 
 never run," she set off at her best speed for the 
 Hall, whence she dispatched the first man ser- 
 vant she met, to the rescue of her handmaiden. 
 After a hasty toilet, she then made her appearance 
 in the drawing room, where she found her brother, 
 and was introduced to his visitors, namely, Mr., 
 Mrs., and Miss Twigg, and T. Twigg, junior ; Mr. 
 Justice Rivers, and his fair daughter Grace. In 
 reply to a remark from the Baronet, on the length 
 of her walk, she entered into a narrative of poor 
 Tibbie's mishap ; Tmgg fidgeting on his seat 
 during the description, like an impatient orator 
 who had something to say on the matter in hand ; 
 but when he heard of the boat swinging off into 
 the middle of the water, he could contain no longer. 
 
 " Damn all boating," he exclaimed abruptly, " I 
 knew how it would end ! I was once near being 
 boated into eternity myself." 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 201 
 
 " Don't mention it," said Mrs. Twigg, " the re- 
 membrance sets me all of a shiver." 
 
 " But I will mention it, Madam," answered 
 Twigg, " for as there are young people present," 
 here he looked at Miss Rivers, " it may serve as a 
 warning. You must know, Mrs. T. and self de- 
 tennined last summer to take a holiday, and so we 
 took advantage of a general fast, and shut-up, for a 
 day's pleasure." 
 
 " As you are speaking before young persons," 
 inteiTupted the Justice, " and by way of warning, 
 I feel bound in duty to remark, that his Majesty's 
 Royal Proclamation ought to have been better ob- 
 sen-ed." 
 
 " And so he does. Sir," interposed Mrs. Twigg ; 
 " we have always fasted religiously, ever since we 
 was able to afford it. Every Shrove-Tuesday we 
 have pancakes, as sure as the day comes ; and hot 
 cross-buns on Good Friday, and salt fish and egg- 
 sauce on Ash-Wednesday." 
 
 " Nobody keeps Lent stricter than I do," con- 
 tinued Twigg, " but says you, a man that has 
 known what it is to want a meal, ought to know 
 
 k3 
 
202 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 how to fast. The time has been when salt- 
 fish with egg-sauce, and pancakes, would have 
 been Uke a Lord Mayor's Feast. But fasting 
 has nothing to do with a day's pleasure. Well, 
 my own vote was for Hornsey -wood-house ; but as 
 the boys are fond of rowing, they were both for 
 boating up to Richmond, and so was Matilda, and 
 Mrs. T. — that we might have a pic -nicking cold 
 collection on the grass." 
 
 " I'll never dine on any grass again, except 
 sparrow-grass," said Mrs. Twigg, with a laugh at 
 her own joke ; " it gave me the lumbargo for a 
 month. I knew how the damp would rise with 
 water all round us ; but Mr. T. was obstinate, and 
 insisted on laying the cloth on a little island, to be 
 like Robinson Crusoe." 
 
 " It was called an Ait," said Miss Twigg af- 
 fectedly, " and had a verdant tree in the middle." 
 
 " To be sure," said Twigg gravely, " I ought to 
 have remembered that the Thames was a tidy 
 river, and always rising and falling like the stocks. 
 Well, there we were— hamper unpacked — cloth 
 spread — pigeon pie — cold ham — cold fowl — cold 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 203 
 
 punch — every thing cold and comfortable — when 
 all at once, says Mrs. T. with a scream, ' Mercy 
 on us, the island's getting littler ! ' And sure 
 enough, as we watched, the water kept creeping 
 on, and creeping on, till it came to the edge of the 
 table-cloth and threatened to swallow up every- 
 thing ! There we were, in eminent danger, and 
 no boat; for those d — d boys had gone up the 
 d — d river after some d — d swans." 
 
 " Haw ! haw ! haw !" burst out the graceless 
 Twigg, junior; " and when we came back, and 
 looked for the island, there was 'Tilda singing-out, 
 on the top of the tree ; and mother roosting a little 
 further down ; with father hugging the trunk, up 
 to his coat -flaps in water ! " 
 
 " None of your levity. Sir," said Twigg very 
 sternly : " if I'd been drowned through your swan- 
 hopping, you wouldn't be in the station in life you 
 enjoy." 
 
 " Stealing a King's swan, young man," said the 
 Justice solemnly, " is capital felony, without bene- 
 fit of clergy." 
 
 " I assure you, Sir Mark Tyrrel, Baronet," ie- 
 
204 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 sumed Twigg, " my reflections, when I saw the 
 devouring element raging round us, was very se- 
 rious — very serious indeed! Here's a situation, 
 thinks I, for a man of my property." 
 
 " Egad !" said Sir Mark, smiling, " or for a man 
 of no property." 
 
 " I declare I could have cried with vexation," 
 said Mrs. Twigg, " to see the good table-cloth 
 floating away ; and the hamper, and all the nice 
 eatables, being squamped. As for the silver forks 
 and plate, it was all lost in the deep ; for though 
 we paid a waterman something handsome, to look 
 for them when the island came up again, he never 
 brought us nothing but a mustard-pot full of mud !" 
 
 " Very provoking indeed, madam," said the 
 Baronet. " But if you're fond of angling," he con- 
 tinued, addressing Twigg, " you should have got 
 a punt, and fished on the spot directly ; for what 
 with the pigeon-pie, the cold ham, and so forth, 
 you had ground-baited rarely for barbel. I only 
 hope, Grace, that you will not take fright at this 
 story, and give up our boat excursions on the lake ? '' 
 
 " Certainly not," answered Grace, " while the 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 205 
 
 vessel has so skilful a master as the Squire, and so 
 expert a mate as Ringwood." 
 
 " Oh, it must be delightful," exclaimed Miss 
 Twigg. " For my own part, I don't mean to give 
 up going on the water — and lakes are so romantic ! 
 And besides, nobody ever endangers and frightens 
 one, except one's own brothers." 
 
 " It's all your own fault," said young Twigg, 
 " if sisters didn't squawk out so, and go into kick- 
 ing hysterics, there'd be no fun in frightening 'em. 
 But ril be bound Miss Rivers knows better how 
 to behave in a boat." 
 
 " I really cannot answer for my behaviour," 
 said Grace, " if I had to climb into a tree for my 
 life, like King Charles the Second." 
 
 " Well, I'll warrant then, you're no coward on 
 land. Miss," said young Twigg, with as gallant an 
 air as he could assume ; " would you believe it, 
 mother made faces all the way here, and would 
 have it the horses were running away — though 
 nothing was taking fright but herself. And there's 
 'Tilda won't walk out for fear, 'cause she's three 
 times seen a dark woman, like a gipsy, about the 
 lanes." 
 
206 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 " As for me," said Mrs. Twigg, " I don't caie 
 who knows it, but I wasn't used to a caniage 
 till late in life : and two hackney-coach-horses, 
 you know, Sir Mark, is one thing, and a pair of 
 spirity rumbustical high-mettled animals, is an- 
 other ; and they're mettlesome enough, though 
 Mr. T. bought greys on purpose, as being the 
 oldest, and likely to be most steadiest." 
 
 " Pooh, pooh, Mrs. T.," said Mr. Twigg, " the 
 horses go no better than they should do ; only 
 you're so confoundedly timid! Matilda's right 
 though, about the brown woman, for I don't half 
 like her myself. I'm sure she's a thief, by her 
 face ; and says you, a man ought to know what a 
 thieving face is, who has set as sheriff at the Old 
 Bailey. I'll lay sixpence she has often been wor- 
 shipped before Mr. Justice Rivers here." 
 
 " I really cannot say. Sir," returned the Justice ; 
 " but there are laws against trespassers and vagrants 
 — and if the woman has damaged your property or 
 annoyed you in person, by begging — I should be 
 happy, on your information, — to discharge my 
 duty as a magistrate." 
 
 " Why as for my property," answered Twigg, 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 207 
 
 " I can't say she has ever taken so much as a stick 
 out of a hedge, or a mushroom from a field ; and 
 so far from begging, the only copper I ever chucked 
 to her, she duck-and-draked into a pond ! My 
 lady, thinks I, if you'd begun life like me, you'd 
 know a hapenny's a hapenny." 
 
 " There is something mysterious about her, that 
 is certain," said Miss Twigg, " and she mutters to 
 herself so, I should fancy she was a witch, only 
 she does not look old enough." 
 
 " I believe, mem," enquired Mrs. Twigg, ad- 
 dressing Mrs. Hamilton, " you are a good deal 
 troubled with witches in Scotland; I have been 
 reading about them in Macbeth ?" 
 
 " They ai'e not so rife in the north, madam, as 
 they were two hundred years ago," replied Mrs. 
 Hamilton, with difficulty composing her face. 
 " Some few, and especially the Highlanders, still 
 believe in the influence of the evil eye ; and attri- 
 bute to it a mortality among their cattle, or a 
 dearth in their dairies." 
 
 " You hear that, Mr. Twigg," said his lady 
 with an awe-struck face, and a tone almost sepul- 
 
208 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 chral. " We make no butter with four cows, — and 
 haven't a drop of cream to our teas. And as to 
 cattle going into the Bills of Mortality, didn't four 
 sucking-pigs die of the measles last week, just as 
 we'd made up our minds who to send 'em to? And 
 didn't all our chickens go in pips, as fast as they 
 was ready for the spit ? And didn't the calf dis- 
 appear the very day after it was weaned — as if by 
 magic ? Sir Mark, pray what is your opinion ? 
 
 " Faith, Madam," said Sir Mark, " it's my be- 
 lief there isn't a witch in the parish, — let alone 
 little Grace here. And if Grace had an evil eye 
 in her head, she would have muiTain'd a cross- 
 grained cow that chased her last summer,— but 
 Ringwood ran up just at pancake-time, and stop- 
 ped the tossing." 
 
 "And pray, Mr. Justice Rivers, what is your 
 opinion of our strange losses ? " enquired the be- 
 wildered Mrs. Twigg. 
 
 " Felony, Madam — larceny — petty larceny — 
 fraud — embezzlement, and breach of trust," re- 
 sponded the Justice ; " and the proper remedy is 
 confinement, — whipping — branding — hard labour 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 209 
 
 — transportation — or hanging !" he added in a tone 
 that made the querist involuntarily look up at his 
 head for a black cap. 
 
 " I knew I was right !" exclaimed Twigg, " from 
 the very first day we came to the Hive, I've sus- 
 pected every servant we have ! I look into every 
 thing too, with my own eyes ; but they're cheat- 
 ing me— I know it— they're cheating me every 
 hour of the day — and of the night too, d — n them ! 
 I shall never close my eyes in peace again !" 
 
 " Nor I neither, my dear," sighed his help- 
 mate, " for we must bum a Hght in our room for 
 the future — and that's sure to keep me broad 
 awake." 
 
 " It's very hard," said Twigg, " for a man of 
 my property to be always gnawed and nibbled at 
 by vermin, like a cheese among rats and mice. I'll 
 be bound at this very moment, if one knew what 
 was doing behind backs — " 
 
 ^'' My dear Mr. T.,"" exclaimed his partner, 
 jumping up from her chair as if she had disco- 
 vered a pin in it, — ^' we ai*e really staying longer 
 
210 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 than is agreeable to propriety at a first visit ! But 
 I'm sure Sir Mark will excuse." 
 
 So saying she made a motion as if to sit down 
 again, but it was only a curtsey ; and then Miss 
 Twigg rose and performed a very elaborate curtsey, 
 as if for the instruction of her mother ; Twigg on 
 his own part made one of those tradesman-lilce 
 bows, when the body bends, but the legs cannot 
 for the counter, — while his son kept repeating his 
 ducks and bobs at Miss E-ivers, whose eyes unfor- 
 tunately would not " come to the bower." Every 
 body received one invite (and some two or three) 
 to visit the Apiary at Hollington ; and then the 
 family scrambled out of the room, and into the 
 carriage. — Pompeyjumped up behind, — and again 
 yellow pannels, scarlet hammercloth, sky-blue-and- 
 orange, grey horses, and bright brass bees, went 
 glittering down the avenue. 
 
 As soon as they were gone, Grace and Mrs. 
 Hamilton looked at each other for a moment, and 
 then bm-st into an involuntary laugh ; in which 
 they were joined by Sir Mark; while even the 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 211 
 
 stem features of the magistrate relaxed into one of 
 his grim smiles. 
 
 " Well, Grace," said the Baronet, " do you 
 think you shall avail yourself of your invitation to 
 the Hive?" 
 
 '' I fear I shall not venture," replied Grace. 
 " To be candid, I do not admire their way of 
 making honey, — they seem to gather it all from 
 stinging-nettles." 
 
 " And I," added the magistrate, " do not ap- 
 prove of their mode of complying with Royal and 
 Ecclesiastical ordinances : nor of the young man's 
 freedom in sporting over private manors. You heard 
 his story of the pheasants. Sir Mark — nothing less 
 than a direct act of poaching, in the eye of the 
 law." 
 
 " Ignorance, neighbour — mere ignorance, and 
 town breeding," returned Sir Mark, " you cannot 
 expect a London street-mongrel to come down 
 and hunt his game like a staunch pointer. But 
 'ware hat ! I have a dinner in the house, that will 
 want justice done to it, and egad, you shall not 
 stir, but on your own recognizance to return ai 
 
212 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 five o'clock, and in the meantime, you may as well 
 leave Grace with Kate here, by way of bail." 
 
 To these terms, after some demur, his worship 
 assented ; to the great delight of his daughter, who 
 had already conceived an instinctive liking for 
 Mrs. Hamilton, which was as readily returned, for 
 no one could remain long in Grace's company 
 without a strong prepossession in her favour, even 
 when she had not the advantage of such a foil as 
 the over-dressed and under-bred Miss Twigg. The 
 latter, like a crimson carnation, showy but artifi- 
 cial, and the former hke a moss-rose, lovely, na- 
 tural, sweet, and blushing from the rich warmth of 
 its own heart. 
 
 The dark-green chariot again received the ma- 
 gistrate, and carried him back to Hawksley, that 
 he might impartially re-examine the parties sus- 
 pected of murder at Hazel Bridge, by hearing the 
 nothing they had to say for themselves, and the 
 everything that everybody had to say against 
 them. 
 
 As soon as the Justice was gone. Sir Mark went 
 to inspect his hounds, and Mrs. Hamilton sent a 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 213 
 
 summons to Tibbie, preparing Miss Rivers before- 
 hand to see a daughter of Eve almost as original 
 as her great mother. 
 
 " Well, Tibbie," enquired her mistress, " how 
 did ye get landed — I hope you were not wet ?" 
 
 " Ou mem," answered Tibbie, " I've had a wea- 
 rifu' time o't. Ye may thole it was doom's cauld 
 on the loch ; and J'ze no uphaud but I thocht 
 whiles o' a wee drappie o' hett toddy — but wae's 
 me, says I, div ye no mind, lass, it was a' skailed 
 wi' the kist ? And Tibbie woman, says I, the 
 King himsel, or the Provost o' London is up bye at 
 the Ha' — an here ye are sittin without sae muckle 
 as ae keek o' him to v/rite o' to Glencosie. 'Od, 
 mem, gin Sandy were fleeching at me himsel — I'm 
 thinking he'd no fleech me into a boat after yon !" 
 
 " You shall have something warm to cure the 
 cold, Tibbie," said Mrs. Hamilton, " and although 
 you have wanted a sight of the King, the Provost 
 is coming back here to his dinner; and I shall 
 need your help in dressing. Away with ye then 
 to my chamber, and set the toilette in order," — and 
 
214 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 off Tibbie trotted ; leaving the two ladies to that 
 kind of small talk, which is so very small that it 
 would not print well except in a " Diamond 
 Edition." 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 215 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 " Hark you, friend, I suppose you don't 
 Come within the Vagrant Act ; I suppose 
 You have some settled habitation?" 
 
 Justice Woodcock. 
 
 " You have a daughter, but you want a son ; 
 I have a son. Sir, but I want a daughter ; 
 Then why not cure our double wants in one, 
 While Heralds' arms> and Love's, together quarter? " 
 
 Anon. 
 
 " 'Tis often seen, 
 
 Adoption strives with Nature ; and choice breeds 
 A native slip to us from foreign seeds." 
 
 All's well that ends well. 
 
 The Justice kept his appointment. At five 
 o'clock he returned to the Hall with his hunger 
 much sharpened by the re-examination of the 
 twelve suspected persons ; a process which took off 
 
216 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 the edge of their stomachs in the same proportion, 
 so that they went back to durance with little more 
 appetite than Mr. Wordsworth's cattle, forty of 
 which ate only like one. 
 
 " I am come to surrender to my bail," said the 
 magistrate, as he entered the drawing-room. " It 
 has been sharp work though, considering the hea- 
 viness of my calendar. I have had to whip and 
 spur." 
 
 " Ay, ril warrant the car of Juggeiiiaut has 
 not been at a stand-still in the interval," replied 
 the Baronet, " but has been doing its twelve miles 
 an hour." 
 
 " The public business has indeed advanced a 
 stage," replied the magistrate. " I have discovered 
 a clue to the murderers ; and moreover I have 
 made acquaintance with the brown woman who so 
 frightened your citizen. I rather think she will 
 wish we had never been on speaking terms. I 
 assure you I read her a lecture — with my black 
 cap on, as Grace calls it, when I use language ne- 
 cessarily severe." 
 
 " I pity her then," said Grace, in an undertone 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 217 
 
 to Mrs. Hamilton, " to a man even his rebukes 
 and frowns must be terrible ; but they must strike 
 a woman to the earth !" 
 
 " And pray, Sir, wjjat was the brown woman's 
 offence ?" enquired Mrs. Hamilton, turning round 
 somewhat abmptly towards Mr. Rivers. 
 
 " She had done nothing morally wrong. Madam,'' 
 replied the Justice, " but as she had no ostensible 
 means of living, and was personally unknown to 
 any one in the parish, Gregory, the constable, ap- 
 prehended her, and brought her before me, that 
 «he might give an account of herself." 
 
 " And thereby gratify the curiosity of the 
 village," said the Baronet, " by means of its 
 gossip-monger old Gregory. I hope when he had 
 her at bay, she flew at him like a marten-cat, and 
 gave him a taste of her claws ! " 
 
 " I can assure you. Sir Mark,"" said the Justice, 
 ^* your client is quite competent to her own de- 
 fence In the whole course of my experience, and 
 I have been many years in the commission, I never 
 encountered such a temper for violence, or such a 
 tongue for what I may even call eloquence. Many 
 
 VOL. I. L 
 
218 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 magistrates, of less standing and nerve, would per- 
 haps have been moved by it to forget that their 
 province is to punish not to pity. But a man be- 
 fore vrhom the human heart has been daily, almost 
 hourly laid bare, and who knows, by professional 
 investigation and dissection, that it is, as described 
 in Scripture, deceitful and desperately wicked, — 
 such a man is proof against that specious but spu- 
 rious eloquence, which flows equally from the 
 well-educated and the illiterate, to avert the penalty 
 of crime, — from the lordly state traitor who sees 
 the axe and the block in perspective, to the base- 
 bom felon who pleads with a rope round his 
 neck." 
 
 " Well, heaven bless his Majesty," exclaimed 
 the Baronet, " for not thinking, when he is mak- 
 ing justices, of Mark T3rrrel ! I can hunt anything 
 that goes upon four legs ; but when it comes to 
 nmning down any creature upon two, whether 
 man or woman, I'm a mere cur. I remember 
 when Judge Jenkinson came our circuit, I thought 
 it my duty to attend at the Assizes, out of respect 
 to his Lordship ; but I was dead beat at my first 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 219 
 
 trial. They brought in a prisoner, like a bag-fox, 
 and turned him down in the middle of the whole 
 pack of judges, and jailors, and lawyers, and wit- 
 nesses, without a chance for his life. He was 
 mobbed to death — he was by Jove ! " 
 
 " Fortunately for the interests of social order," 
 returned the Magistrate, " Nature makes some men 
 of a sterner stuff. As a mere instrument of the law, 
 a criminal Judge ought no more to be expected to 
 sympathise, than the gallows itself. Were the Sword 
 of Justice so softly tempered, that every blow made a 
 notch in its own edge, we should soon have it worn 
 down to the hilt. Such was not the metal of the 
 elder Brutus, when he doomed the son of his own 
 loins to death ; and presided at the execution ! " 
 
 " Oh that horrid Judgment of Brutus!" said 
 Grace in an aside to Mrs. Hamilton. " It hangs 
 over the fire-place in the study; and my father 
 sets his features by the picture, as if it were a 
 mirror. I wish I could say he did not regulate 
 his feelings sometimes by the same model ; — but 
 many a poor poacher that I have almost begged 
 
22C^ TYLNEY HALL, 
 
 off, has owed the harshness of his sentence to ji 
 glance at the odious Roman stoic." 
 
 " Excuse my curiosity. Sir," said Mrs. Hamilton, 
 again addressing the Justice, — " but at the risk of 
 being classed by my brother amongst the village 
 gossips, I am really curious to know more of this 
 mysterious woman, whether she is young or old, 
 handsome or ugly ? •' 
 
 " She possesses at least the remains of beauty. 
 Madam,"" replied the Magistrate. " As for age, she 
 may be either fifty or thirty ; for irregular habits, 
 yice, hard fare, and exposure to weather, cause 
 considerable difference in the external signs. But 
 I should state her at not more than forty, to judge 
 from the brightness of her black eyes and the fult 
 ness of her figure ; her arms, indeed, which she 
 constantly used in gesticulation, were round and 
 beautifully turned.'' 
 
 " Poor creature,"' exclaimed Grace, " she had 
 perhaps seen better days ! I hav e heard of children of 
 good parentage being stolen and brought up by gip- 
 sies; and who knows but it may have been her fate P " 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 221 
 
 " Why, truly, if she had been filched iroin a 
 noble family," said the Justice, with one of his grim 
 smiles, " she could not have derived a haughtier 
 bearing from her birth. In spite of Gregory, she 
 seated herself in a chair with the air of a countess; 
 and listened to his official report with the invulne- 
 rable nonchalance of one conscious of the privilege 
 of the peerage. I can well fancy the dignified toss 
 with which she threw Mr. Twigg's halfpenny into 
 the duck-pond ! *" 
 
 " It looks like good blood, thafs certain," said 
 Sir Mark. " Too much spirit and action to have 
 been a get by Gipsy out of Beggar, — grandsire 
 Tinker — grandam Tramper great-gi'andsire Rat- 
 catcher, by Costermonger, Sand-man, Knife -giinder, 
 and so forth. Of course you let her go, for the 
 sake of the breed.'' 
 
 " I DID let her go,'' returned the Justice, and 
 
 here he paused, " to the County Bridewell. She 
 
 will beat hemp there for a month, as the statute 
 directs." 
 
 This announcement caused a considerable sen- 
 sation in his auditors ; Sir Mark gave involuntarily 
 
222 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 a significant whistle, and looked at his sister; who 
 looked in turn at Grace ; who looked down at the 
 carpet. 
 
 Possibly the Magistrate interpreted their thoughts, 
 for he immediately added that he had put it into 
 the woman's own power to mitigate the sentence, 
 by declaring her name and parish ; both of which 
 she contemptuously refused to communicate. 
 Luckily the announcement of dinner interrupted 
 any further conversation on the subject, and the 
 mind of the Magistrate, like that of Justice Greedy, 
 took a turn towards " the substantials." 
 
 As for the dinner, the bill of fare shall not be 
 copied here in print, with a circumstantial descrip- 
 tion and criticism of all the made dishes, English 
 or French ; a custom as impertinent and annoying 
 to the reader, as for a spectator at a theatre, 
 jammed perhaps in a hot back -row of the pit, to 
 have his eyes treated w^ith the display of a stage 
 banquet, and his ears with the popping of corks, 
 — whereupon some malicious actor advances close 
 to the lamps, and deliberately quaffs off his spark- 
 ling Champagne, iced of course, before our Tan- 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 32^ 
 
 talus"'s face. Suffice it that they dined ; and then, 
 after the ladies had retired, the Baronet and the 
 Justice betook themselves steadily to drinking 
 some claret, quite as good as La Fitte or Chateau 
 Margaux, though known in those days by some 
 other name. 
 
 After a few glasses dedicated to the old standui*, 
 Tory toasts of the time. Sir Mark filled a bumper, 
 and getting on his legs, drank it off to the health 
 of " The First Favourite for the Maiden Stakes, — 
 Grace Rivers ;" the ceremony ending, according 
 to an old fashioned form of gallantry, by the glass 
 being thrown over his shoulder, and dashed to 
 atoms on the carpet. The Justice was compelled 
 to follow the example, and as he really doated on 
 his daughter, he acknowledged the compliment in 
 a warmer tone of feeling than could have been ex- 
 pected fi'om so rock-like a source. Unwonted 
 moisture, — "tears such as angels weep," — be- 
 dimmed his falcon-like eyts, as he alluded to the 
 virtues of his child, her frank, open disposition, 
 and her affectionate devotion to himself; and for a 
 moment the stem magistrate seemed devoted to no 
 
224 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 other laws than those of Nature. In conclusion, he 
 filled his glass, to the health of " Ringwood Tyrrel, 
 the Hope of the Hall," duly honouring the toast 
 with a smash of glass as before. 
 
 Sir Mark was no orator : he made no attempt 
 even to express his feelings, by a speech ; but he 
 set up a joyful yoicks ! which said quite as much, — 
 and seized the hand of the Justice and shook it 
 heartily. He had been longing, in secret, to in- 
 troduce the subject which lay uppermost in his 
 heart ; and this fortunate coupling of Grace with 
 ■Ringwood, seemed to have broken the ice before him. 
 
 " Egad, neighbour," he said, " I'm not much used 
 to link my ideas together with dog-couples : but this 
 toasting of your daughter and my son, has put a 
 strange thought into my head. They are both of an 
 age,both of a height, or thereabouts, and one is my 
 heir, and the other your heiress, which is as fair a 
 start as heart can wish. Suppose we were to lay 
 an even pony or two, which will be married first ? 
 It would be a sporting thing ; and if Grace comes 
 in winner, I shall enjoy what I never enjoyed be- 
 fore, — the loss of my money ! " 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 225 
 
 *' Why then done, for a hundred," said the Jus- 
 tice, who like country gentlemen in general was in 
 some degree a sportsman ; and the generous in- 
 fluence of the grape, moreover, pre-disposed him to 
 enter into the whim. 
 
 "Twice!" cried Sir Mark. 
 
 " Done again !" replied the Justice. 
 
 " Three times ?" 
 
 ** Done ! done I and done !" cried the Justice ; 
 " and there I must stop. And pray endorse your 
 betting-book, ' strictly private,' with its entry of a 
 certain gambling magistrate, who may have to- 
 morrow to suspend a publican's license, for allow- 
 ing card playing, — Jonas Hanway for instance, and 
 his whist club at the Rabbits." 
 
 " You may suspend me with the license," said 
 Sir Mark, " when you can find any one to swear to 
 their playing. But be easy about the betting- 
 book ; we will be only upon honour." 
 
 " By the way, Sir Mark," said the Magistrate, 
 " there is a third chance in the said matrimonial 
 race, that we have both overlooked ; the possibility 
 
 L 3 
 
i^6 TYLNEY HALL.' 
 
 of the parties coming to the church neck and neck 
 at the same time !" 
 
 " A dead heat by Jove !" exclaimed the Baronet, 
 with well-feigned surprise, "and an old jockey 
 and racer like me, to forget that such events may 
 come off! Egad, neighbour, it would not be a 
 bad way of hedging our money, eh ?" 
 
 " Sir Mark, are you serious or in joke ?" enquired 
 the Magistrate. 
 
 "Either, at your pleasure," returned the Baronet, 
 assuming however a gravity of tone and look that 
 indicated he was in earnest. The moment had 
 come to speak, but he w^as puzzled how to begin. 
 He fidgeted in his chair, filled a glass of claret, and 
 gulped it down, then gave a loud hem, and then 
 three very bad coughs. 
 
 " It's no use beating round the bush,'' he ex- 
 claimed at last, " when the game's a-foot ! I think, 
 fi-iend Rivers, our ideas and wishes are packing 
 well together ; and if you are as agreeable as I am 
 to the match between Ringwood and Grace, all I 
 can say is, I will back son against daughter with 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 227 
 
 you, guinea for guinea ; — and the dearest desire of 
 my heart will be fulfilled to boot !" 
 
 " To be candid with you, Sir Mark," replied 
 the Magistrate, " our bowls, biassed by old friend- 
 ship, have been aimed at the same jack. Nothing 
 indeed could afford me greater pride and pleasure 
 than such an alliance. But as neither of the 
 parties will be of age for a year or two, it seemed 
 premature to " 
 
 " Zounds, man," inten-upted the delighted 
 Baronet, " you would not caiTy them into church, 
 would you, without a little wooing before-hand ? — 
 Cupid wants training, as well as a colt, before 
 you bring him to the post." 
 
 " Your remark is just," said the Magistrate : 
 " for my own part I will take care to apprize Grace 
 of our arrangement ; and that henceforward she is 
 to consider her affections engaged to your eldest 
 son." 
 
 "No — hang it! — no," exclaimed Sir Mark. ''Do 
 not come the magistrate over her neither I It will 
 be time enough to use our authority, as fathers, 
 when either of the young people has bolted out of 
 
228 TYLISEY HALL. 
 
 the course. We mustn't inoculate, but let them 
 take it naturally. Love is a plant with long 
 straggling roots, and the gardener who attempts to 
 pot itrr-no, that's not it ! — but it's Kate's sentiment, 
 and a very good one. And now boy, a bumper 
 to a better match than was ever made on the turf. 
 — Tally — tally-ho — yoicks — yoicks — yoicks ! — 
 yo— icks !" 
 
 It is amusing to think that during the foregoing 
 conversation of the two fathers, the unconscious 
 Grace was sitting in the very next room, 
 
 " In maiden meditation, fancy free ;" 
 
 thinking no more of courtship, marriage, and Ring- 
 wood, than of squibs, crackers, and Guy Faux. 
 Her lively spirits, her sweet temper, her natural 
 good taste, and artless manners, had advanced her 
 hourly in the opinion of Mrs. Hamilton ; till at 
 last, after a long kind look at her fair young face 
 and graceful figure, that lady addressed her, in a 
 tone of tenderness that thrilled through her very 
 soul, as " her dear Miss Rivers." 
 
 " If I may beg a favour, my dear Madam," she 
 replied, " pray oblige me by following the prece- 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 229 
 
 (lent of Sir Mark, and calling me only by my 
 Christian name,— Grace, plain Grace." 
 
 " Well then, Grace, my dear Grace, did you ever 
 place a hollow sea- shell to your ear, and notice its 
 perpetual sighing for the waters that ought to fill it ? " 
 
 Grace signified that she had often done so on 
 the coast. 
 
 " Come hither then, and tell me truly, did that 
 young heart of yours never feel a craving, an 
 indescribable craving, — as if there was some aching 
 void in it that required filling up ?" 
 
 The question sufiused the face and neck of 
 Grace with a deep blush ; but it lasted only for an 
 instant and vanished again ere she had pronounced 
 the first word of her answer. 
 
 " Indeed, my dear Madam, I have felt it often — 
 always at the sound of one word, and at the sight 
 of one action ;" and she concluded the sentence 
 with a sigh. 
 
 " I know well what you mean," said Mrs. Hamil- 
 ton, pressing her own hands to her bosom. " I feel 
 it here at this moment — here, where I have felt it 
 
280 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 for years. Alone, or in society — in joy or in 
 sorrow, in sickness, in health, here it is — the same 
 intense yearning, everlastingly crying out in its 
 agony, give ! give ! — Tell me, my dear Grace, tell 
 me, is it not even thus that your overcharged heart 
 has pined for a mother ? " 
 
 " Oh, God knows it," cried Grace, clasping her 
 hands, and with difficulty suppressing the tears 
 that were rushing upwards to her eyes ; " my heart 
 has throbbed almost to bursting, at the sight of 
 caresses which I never — oh never knew! — never 
 can know ! " 
 
 " Even so, Grace," said Mrs. Hamilton, " have 
 I been wrung with anguish, to see a mother em- 
 brace a daughter. It has been my fate to grieve 
 through many lonely hours, but they would not 
 have been either grievous or lonely, with some one 
 —some such sweet girl as yourself — to love, and to 
 love me. In imagination I have nursed this fair hope 
 from bud to blossom, into even the full-blown 
 flower. I have hung and trembled over her in^ 
 fancy — heard her lisp her first accents of love—: 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 231 
 
 watched the Uttle sports of her childhood — and 
 have been the confidant of the secrets of her girl- 
 hood. And was it not singular, Grace, that the 
 daughter of my poor fond fancy should have had 
 eyes the very colour of your own, and the same 
 bonny brown hair ? " 
 
 To this question Grace made no reply, but by 
 putting both her hands into those of Mrs. Hamilton, 
 who gently di'ew the graceful girl towards her, 
 and imprinted a kiss on her forehead. " A Welsh- 
 woman," she continued, " would have sworn ' twas 
 some tie of blood between us, that attracted my 
 love to you from the first moment of our meeting !" 
 
 "And mine to you, my dear Madam,'' added 
 Grace. " It is impossible I could remember you 
 before you left the Hall, and yet that lady -like 
 figure, and the benign smile, and the low gentle 
 voice were so familiar to me, that it seemed like 
 the fulfilment of a dream !" 
 
 " It is the fulfilment of a dream," said Mrs. 
 Hamilton. " Our stars have spoken, and our 
 hearts interpreted the oracle. Henceforth I will 
 be your mother, and you shall be my daughter, the 
 
232 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 dear child of my soul, if not of my body, — shall 
 it not be so, my own sweet Grace ?" 
 
 " O for ever ! and ever !" exclaimed Grace, 
 throwing herself into the arms that opened to re- 
 ceive her. " And here begin the happiest hom's 
 of my life!" 
 
 " And here end the most wretched of mine," said 
 the widow, caressing her adopted daughter with as 
 much tenderness as belongs to many real mothers. 
 " Oh Grace, the blessing you would have been to 
 me at Glencosie ! Some day you shall know all ; 
 but for this evening at least, the past shall not 
 sadden the present !" 
 
 As the reader is aware, there had been with re- 
 gard to Grace w hat the ingenious and elegant Mr. 
 Robins would call " a bidding in two places :" 
 and at the very same moment that completed her 
 maternal adoption in the drawing-room, the paternal 
 shout and view^-holla of Sir Mark ascended from 
 the dining-room, in honour of his daughter-elect. 
 It suggested no other idea, however, to the ladies 
 but that either he had broken cover with some 
 never-sufficiently -to-be-recorded fox; or that he 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 238 
 
 had taken abundance of wine, and would be the 
 better for a never-sufficiently-to-be-announced cup 
 of tea. Accordingly Mrs. Hamilton rang for the 
 equipage, and made tea ; and at about the sixth 
 summons the gentlemen put in an appear- 
 ance at her table, both certainly a little elevated, 
 but by joy rather than the juice of the gfkpe. 
 Indeed the Baronet's head was so full of his favourite 
 idea, that with an abstracted air he walked straight 
 up to Grace, and gave her a heairty kiss, to the 
 infinite astonishment of the young lady as well as 
 his sister ; and not a little to his own, when he 
 recovered his recollection. The Justice alone, 
 who was in the secret, and guessed what w^as 
 passing in the mind of Sir Mark, conceived at 
 once that the salute was anticipatory of the mar- 
 riage ceremony, as was really the case ; and his 
 grim smile, at the sheepish look and awkward apo- 
 logies of the Baronet, was the signal for a general 
 laugh. All the parties were indeed in higher 
 spirits than usual, and the evening passed away 
 cheerfully, and before they separated. Sir Mark in- 
 sisted on Grace singing one of her songs, in token 
 that she had forgiven him for making her blush. 
 
234 TYLNEY HALLi 
 
 Grace immediately seated herself at a piano 
 which in those days was reckoned a very grand 
 one, though much such an instrument as a petty 
 tradesman now selects at a broker's for a present 
 to his daughter from boarding-school. After a 
 short prelude, she sang to a plaintive Scotch air 
 the following words, which, as a corollary to what 
 had passed in the dining-room, made the two 
 fathers exchange some very significant glances. 
 
 My mother bids me love a lord, 
 
 My father does the same, 
 
 But then my heart has made a choice 
 
 Of one I will not name ; 
 
 My parents' frowns reject the suit, 
 
 Their angry words reprove, 
 
 But oh I cannot love the man 
 
 My mother bids me love ! 
 
 They say his father is an Earl 
 And talk of high degree. 
 Broad ribbons and a star for him, 
 A coronet for me. — 
 I care not for the eagle's nest, 
 But building with the dove, 
 I cannot, cannot, love the man 
 My mother bids me love. 
 
TYLNEY HALL. *235 
 
 There is a secret voice that breathes 
 A fair and gentle mind, 
 There is a certain eye that tells 
 A heart that's warm and kind, 
 There is a vow so firm and fast. 
 And sealed in heav'n above. 
 That oh ! I cannot love the man 
 My mother bids me love \ 
 
 My father frets, my mother pines, 
 
 Their heads are silver-grey, 
 
 They cannot long possess a will 
 
 For me to disobey ; 
 
 I would that I were in my grave. 
 
 This anguish to remove. 
 
 For oh ! I cannot love the man 
 
 My mother bids me love." 
 
 " Egad, Grace," exclaimed the Baronet, " you 
 have chosen a sorrowful ditty ; Kate there is ready 
 to cry. My own heart was at feather-weight 
 awhile ago, but now it seems carrying six pounds 
 extra. I hope the words are none of your own 
 making ? *' 
 
 " Raby was so kind as to copy them for me," 
 answered Grace, " from some book of poems in 
 your library." 
 
 " Ay there it is," said Sir Mark, looking at the 
 
236 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 Justice with a slight gloom on his brow. " Catch 
 Ringwood at copying out anything — ^barring a 
 ' recipe for making boots waterproof,' or a * cure 
 for the distemper.' I'll warrant, Grace, he never 
 wrote out anything for you in his life ? " 
 
 " Nothing adapted to the voice," answered 
 Grace, with an arch smile ; " but he once obliged 
 me with autograph directions how to make German 
 Paste for my singing-birds." 
 
 " And St. Kitts? " asked the Baronet. 
 
 " Your nephew used formerly to copy poems 
 for me," replied Grace. " But our tastes did not 
 coincide; and he grew tired of extracting from 
 Rochester and Sedley, whom I could not relish, — 
 and he had as little liking on his own part for my 
 old favourite Herrick." 
 
 " Come Grace, come, "said the Magistrate rising 
 abruptly from his chair, " it is time to return to 
 Hawksley, — or must I read the Riot Act and dis- 
 solve this meeting according to law ? I have to 
 look over the Hazel-Bridge evidence before I go 
 to bed. Sir Mark, you will remember our bet for 
 the Maiden Stakes ? " 
 
TYLNEY HALL, 237 
 
 " Three hundred, even, the colt against the fiJly 
 — and may neither of us win ! " said the Baronet, 
 with a knowing wink and a warm shake of the 
 hand. " As for you, Grace, I see that you and 
 Kate have cottoned, and I need not bid you come 
 again soon to the Hall ! " 
 
 " Miss Riv^ers has been so kind as to promise 
 to come often," said Mrs. Hamilton. " I am to 
 have the happiness of her society at least once a 
 week." 
 
 " God bless you then, Grace," said Sir Mark, 
 "• and send you ability to keep yoiu* word. The 
 boys wdll be home soon, and then I shall kiss and 
 court you by proxy — but that's only a joke." 
 
 Thus they parted, and Mrs. Hamilton retired to 
 her room, and the Baronet to his bed, to dream of 
 weddings and rings and white favours, as if bride- 
 cake had been placed under his pillow. 
 
 " Well, Tibbie," said the lady as the Scotch- 
 woman helped her to undress, " how has all fared 
 with you the night ? " 
 
 " Od Mem," replied Tibbie, " it's just extra- 
 ordinar, my head's rinnin round Uke a peery ! I'm 
 
538 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 thinking the justice-wark will be cannily dune 
 the mom's mom, when the Provost and Sir Mark 
 Tirl hae been at their high jinks. As fac's death, 
 Mem, for I keekit in at the door, I saw the Provost 
 casting the wine-glasses owre his shouther to play- 
 smash upon the flure ! " 
 
 " An old English custom, Tibbie," said Mrs. 
 Hamilton, " by way of doing honour to a health. 
 Formerly it was common for gentlemen to cast 
 their cravats of Mechlin lace, or their perukes, on 
 the fire-grate, according to the example of the 
 proposer of the toast." 
 
 " Macklin crawvats, and perukes ! Gude safe 's ! " 
 exclaimed Tibbie, with an appropriate elevation of 
 her eyes and hands. " My certie, it's no wonder 
 thae English hae siccan a Nawtional Debt, as they 
 ca't ! Douce Dawvid Nicol,— and he's the cashier 
 o' the Dundee Bank,— did never the like o' that ! " 
 
 " But the kitchen, Tibbie," enquired the mis- 
 tress, " how came ye on with the strange seiTants ?" 
 
 " By my troth, Mem," said Tibbie, " they were 
 camsteary eneuch. Yon prejink flunkies wha cam 
 wi' the Provost, were owre up settin to drink yill. 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 239 
 
 but chappit on the butler, to bring ben the port 
 wine and the sheiTy wine, as affhand as in a 
 change-house, w^here they were gaun to pay the 
 lawin '. But I'm thinking I gied them a screed o' 
 fly ting, instead o' yon fule body Deborah. ' Drink 
 awa'. Sirs," says I, * drink awa'a ye're a' comin to 
 pigs and whistles ! ' But I might have spared my 
 breath to cool my parritch ! Here's t'ye, Tibbie, 
 cries ane, and here's t'ye, Tibbie, cries anither, and 
 here's t'ye, Tibbie, cries yon Jerry, and send ye 
 gude yill and gude custom at the Pig and 
 Whistle ! " 
 
 " Never fash yoursel, Tibbie," said the Mistress, 
 " wi' the likes — you're no at Glencosie." 
 
 " Ou, Mem," said the Scotchwoman, " it 'maist 
 gars me greet to see the dinging down o' the glass 
 and the cheeny, and the siller-spunes, wi' their 
 pliskies. — Div ye no think, Mem, it would be a 
 saving o' siller to write north for a hantle o' wooden 
 quaichs and bickers and horn spunes, for nae doot 
 they'll be for emitatin their betters, and casting 
 their drinkin-cups owre the shouther ? " 
 
 " It's a serious question, Tibbie, and I must 
 
^40 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 sleep upon it," replied Mrs. Hamilton ; and with 
 this quietus she dismissed the handmaid to her 
 own pillow, to dream, if one may guess at her 
 night-visions, of a mad bull in a china-shop. 
 
TYLNET HALL. .^241 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 " And if a merry meeting may be wished, God prohibit it !" 
 
 DOGBERRT. 
 
 ** He sh^^Jl be endured- 
 
 What goodman boy ? I say he shall. Go to. 
 Am I the master here or you ? Go to." 
 
 Old Capulet. 
 
 " Patience perforce with wilful choler meeting, 
 Makes my flesh tremble \v\ih their different greeting, 
 I will withdraw ; but this intrusion shall, 
 Now seeming sweet, convert to bitter gall." 
 
 Tybalt. 
 
 *' Between us two let there be peace ; both joining 
 As join'd in injuries, one enmity 
 Against a foe by doom express assign'd us, 
 That cruel serpent." 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 Hilary term ended at last, to the great delight 
 of Sqmre Ned, who looked upon Ringwood as 
 his adopted son; a relationship originating in 
 sporting, hke tliat of Cotton, the angler, with 
 " his Father Walton." 
 
 VOL. I. M 
 
.?a48 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 He acceded, therefore, with great glee, to a 
 proposition from Sir Mark, that they should ride 
 together on horseback as far as the first stage, to 
 meet and welcome the young Collegians ; while 
 Dick the huntsman, and the whipper-in, should 
 follow with led horses, for the use of the stu- 
 dents. 
 
 " A clever little nag that, " said the Squire^ 
 after a long one-eyed look at a brown gelding, 
 that Dick was leading, "knows how to go- 
 capital action." 
 
 " A picture isn't he ? '' said the Baronet. " I 
 bought him last week, by way of a surprise to 
 Ringwood. He was bred by old Toby Sparks, 
 at Hollington ; by Jiggumbob, out of Tolderol, 
 by Diddledumkins, Cockalorum, and so forth." 
 
 "An odd fish old Toby," said the Squire, 
 " always gives 'em queer names — -can jump a bit 
 no doubt ? " 
 
 "He jumps like a flea," said Dick, " and as for 
 galloping, he can go from anywhere to everywhetfe 
 in forty minutes, — and back again." 
 
 " Glad of it," said Ned, "just the thing for Ring- 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 243 
 
 wood — all ready eh I*" here he looked at his watch 
 "Go!" 
 
 And away they trotted, the Squire keeping his 
 horse a little in the rear of the Baronet's, a position 
 which enabled him to divide his conversation be- 
 tween Sir Mark and the huntsman, who now and 
 then exchanged a sentence with the whipper-in, as 
 he followed with two led hacks ; and in this order 
 they took to the road. Occasionally, at a signal from 
 the Squire, they slackened or increased their speed ; 
 and so well did he time the pace, that they arrived 
 at the Green Dragon at * * * * just as the 
 Oxford coach stopped to change horses. 
 
 " Well my boys, welcome home again," said the 
 Baronet, shaking them successively by the hand ; 
 while the Squire, after a nod a- piece, gave Ring- 
 wood an affectionate slap on the back that would 
 have corrected a smaller child. 
 
 " Been tooling the tits eh ?** he said ; " very 
 pretty team, — near wheeler lame behind" — he con- 
 tinued, as he critically watched each horse as it 
 went smoking and shaking its tail into tho^ 
 stable-yard. " Glad to see you, Ringwood," here 
 
 M 2 
 
S44 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 another slap. " Old Hilary hasn't rubbed off any 
 of your bloom." 
 
 The eye of the father made a similar remark 
 that Ringwood looked rather more florid than usual ; 
 while the complexion of Raby was somewhat paler 
 than common, — -the natural results of too much 
 port and claret, and an excess of Greek and Latin. 
 As for St. Kitts, his cheeks wore the old brown, — 
 a tinge somewhat resembling that of an undoubted 
 " portrait by Rembrandt" in a picture-dealer's win- 
 dow. At the same time, the three faces were as 
 different in expression as in colour, — the Creole's 
 implied indifference ; that of Raby beamed with the 
 quiet enjoyment of a mind at peace with itself, 
 somewhat heightened by the pleasure of meeting 
 liis father ; but, in spite of its healthy hue, the 
 countenance of Ringwood was saddened by a cast 
 of anxiety and gloom ; hinting, too probably, that 
 he looked back on time and money equally misspent 
 at college. His quick eye, however, detected at a 
 glance the new acquisition to the stable, and every 
 thought of self-reproach for the follies or vices of 
 the heir of Tylney was lost in the consideration 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 245 
 
 of the many good points about the oifspring of 
 Jiggumbob and Tolderol. From this reverie he 
 was roused by the voice of his father, 
 
 " Well, how do you think he will cany you — for 
 he is all your own, my boy, from the bridle to the 
 crupper ?" 
 
 " If he's old Sparks's colt, Sir, he's the very 
 one I've long set my heart upon," answered Ring- 
 wood. " But if he's meant as a college-prize. Sir, he 
 belongs more to St Kitts than to me ; and to Raby 
 more than either." 
 
 "Raby be d — d," the Squire was about to say^ 
 but he suppressed the words, and contented himself 
 with tacitly expressing his opinion, by snatching the 
 bridle of the horse in question and turning him round 
 with his head to Ringwood and his tail to Raby. 
 
 " For my part," said the Creole, " I disclaim any 
 idea of rivalry in our studies— and am pained to 
 think my cousin has suggested any enquiry as to 
 our relative progress at Oxford." 
 
 " Sink the letter then," said Ringwood, in an 
 under tone, at the same time shifting to the offside 
 of the horse, and affecting to examine his fore feet. 
 
246 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 " You forget — I am upon honour," replied the 
 Creole, in the same tone and stooping into the same 
 position. 
 
 " Why then — take care of yourselves ! " cried 
 Ringwood, springing into the saddle, and strik- 
 ing the spiu-s into the horse with such sudden- 
 ness, that St. Kitts only escaped, by a desperate 
 spring backwards, being thrown down and trampled 
 under foot. 
 
 " Confound the fellow — he will start the mail," 
 cried Sir Mark, catching the head of one of the 
 leaders, Who seemed inchned to improve upon the 
 then rate of travelling, by running away with the 
 coach. However Ringwood continued to spur 
 desperately on, as if, Byron-like, he was under some 
 excitement that was to be worked off by hard gal- 
 lopping; in fact when he returned, he was covered 
 with dust, and the panting steed was in a lather of 
 sweat and foam. " He is not a roarer that's cer- 
 tain," he said, as he dismounted and threw the 
 bridle to the whipper-in. 
 
 " Who the devil said he was !" cried Sir Mark. 
 ** Dick see him thoroughly rubbed down, — and 
 
TYLNEY HALL, 247 
 
 have him well clothed. Let them all have a good 
 feed of com — and mmd, Dick, see with your own 
 eyes that the Green Dragon does not devour it 
 for them. And now let's in-doors — for two legs 
 must have a bait as well as four." 
 
 As they went in, Raby twitched his brother by 
 the sleeve, and caused him to remain a little behind. 
 
 " For God's sake, and for your own sake, Ring- 
 wood," he said, " don't show this spleen before 
 our father. St. Kitts will only play the amiable, 
 and the comparison will be to yoiu disadvantage." 
 
 " Right," said Ringwood, " and thank ye for 
 the hint : he's sure to run cunning." 
 
 In pursuance of this line of policy, Ringwood 
 discarded his reserve, and laughed and chatted as 
 if determined to overcrow the Creole even in 
 mirth and good humour. He drew humourous 
 pictures of college comforts, of fresh-men, and 
 tuft-hunters, of bed-makers, beadles, and barbers } 
 and then he gave an Egan-like description of a 
 pugilistic encounter between a gownsman and a 
 bargeman, that made the Squire roar with laughter. 
 
248 -^ TYLNEY HALL. ^ 
 
 He next entered into an animated account of a 
 boat-race, in which he had rowed among the win- 
 ners ; and then of a cock-fight ; and then of a 
 coursing meeting, well attended by Oxonians ; to 
 the evident delight of his father. 
 
 After such stirring subjects, the Creole's descrip- 
 tion of an examination, and the terrors and boggling 
 of the unprepared ; and of a college-inquisition, 
 and the speech of a Proctor, — fell dead on the ear ; 
 the organ of Ringwood excepted, for he suspected, 
 and perhaps rightly, that the narrative contained 
 some covert reference, both retrospectively and 
 prospectively, to his own career at college. At 
 any rate he made the application to himself, and 
 secretly resolved to be avenged at the first oppor- 
 tunity : he indulged his mood in the meantime, by 
 throwing a threatening glance occasionally at the 
 Creole, which the latter received with a calm 
 smile, relying on his own superior powers of re- 
 taliation ; even as the malignant viper which will 
 bask lazily in your very path, conscious of his 
 own cruel fangs, and daring your foot, whilst the 
 
TYLNEY HALL. ;.249 
 
 unarmed snake startles away, more fearing tlian 
 feared, into the nearest thicket. 
 
 At last he struck, and with deadly effect. He 
 well knew how to " heap coals on the head of his 
 enemy," by dealing with him to all appearance 
 generously, and even kindly, where less politic 
 natures w^ould avow their animosity by angry looks 
 and bitter speech. He again took part in the 
 conversation, and choosing Ringwood for his 
 theme, repeated in glowing terms the praises he 
 had heard lavished at Oxford on his intrepid 
 riding; his superior shooting, which had made him 
 the crack shot of the Pigeon Club ; his exquisite 
 driving, four-in-hand, on the box of the long 
 coaches ; and he even recorded certain Bacchana- 
 lian feats, at which his subject had been the hero ; 
 adding however a deprecatory clause, that such 
 irregularities could scarcely be at all times avoided 
 by a young man at the University, but at the ex- 
 pense of personal ridicule and insult, and that he 
 had felt compelled himself to join occasionally in 
 such orgies. 
 
 The Baronet's face glowxd wdth pride during 
 
 M 3 
 
250 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 the recital, and the Squire's one eye glistened with 
 absolute delight : but Ringwood, for the first time 
 in his life, heard with pain and disgust, an ac- 
 knowledgement of his superior skill, ardour, and 
 success in all the various branches of field sports. 
 Neither did the younger brother listen with much 
 pleasure to the next topic which the Creole 
 thought proper to introduce; although he studi- 
 ously quoted the very high eulogiums which had 
 been pronounced on Raby's acquirements, in lan- 
 guages and classical literature. The extreme con- 
 trast between the reputation of the two brothers, 
 thus artfully placed in juxtaposition, suggested an 
 inference too obvious to escape the mind of the 
 Baronet ; who consequently shrank from any allu- 
 sion or enquiry as to scholarship — being sorrow- 
 fully persuaded that his favourite son and heir had 
 made neither step nor stride towards any degrees 
 except the geographical. 
 
 The unfortunate victim, whose feelings were 
 really to be pitied, actually writhed in soul, under 
 the infliction. As he dearly loved his father, he 
 could not witness the gloom which overcast his fine 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 251^ 
 
 jovial countenance without an exquisite pang of sell- 
 reproach ; and bitterly he execrated the folly that had 
 given his cousin the opportunity of such a triumph. 
 
 " The hell-hound !" he said to himself, " he might 
 as well have put the letter into my father's hands, 
 before all present ; but cunning as he is in run- 
 ning on his foil, and doubling, he shall find I can 
 pick it out." 
 
 In the mean time his feelings were somewhat 
 soothed by receiving, under the table, the secret 
 pressiure of a kindly hand, which he knew to be 
 Raby's, who took this method of showing that he 
 appreciated and sympathized with his situation. 
 It was the act of a friend in need, and Ringwood 
 acknowledged its value at that moment by a grip 
 so strenuous, that the blood rushed up into 
 Raby's cheeks, who with difficulty suppressed 
 an exclamation. The two brothers had indeed, 
 in some degree, forgotten their own differences, 
 and were united more than foimerly as mutual 
 alUes against St. Kitts, whom by some vague, in- 
 defiinable instinct, they had begun to regard in the 
 light of a common enemy. 
 
252 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 " Here*s good luck to the new nag," said Squire 
 Ned, with a nod to Ringwood, preparatory to a 
 long pull and a strong pull at a tankard of xx 
 ale, for which the Green Dragon was justly 
 famous. "A roarer eh? — sounder in wind than I 
 am ! — can't drink a pint without fetching breath." 
 " And here's to you, boy, yourself," he added, with 
 a renewed draught in honour of Ringwood : — 
 " nothing but a good fellow — upright and down- 
 right — no skulker — no flincher — no snake in the 
 gTass !" 
 
 With the last of his negatives, the Squire threw 
 such a significant meaning into his one grey eye, 
 and fixed it so pointedly on the Creole, that the 
 latter immediately perceived that one of the party, 
 at least, had detected the latent origin of his 
 insidious panegyrics. Unlike the Baronet, who 
 set great store by an University education — honest 
 Ned attached no earthly value to human learning, 
 beyond reading and writing ; and therefore he had 
 listened to the praises of Ringwood as a sports- 
 man, with an unalloyed rapture, only equalled in 
 degree by the utter apathy with which he had 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 253 
 
 heard the encomiums on Raby's classical attain- 
 ments. It was not till he noticed Sir Mark's 
 depression, that he suspected the sting which, 
 like Cleopatra's asp, had been treacherously in- 
 troduced, under a covering of fruit and flowers. 
 His unbounded love and admiration of Ringwood 
 led him naturally to the conclusion, that jealousy, 
 and a desire of supplanting him, were the private 
 motives of the West Indian ; or, as he forcibly 
 illustrated it by a mental comparison, Sir Mark 
 had a young cuckoo in his nest, that would eject 
 his own brood. The abrupt trial of the new nag, 
 and the naiTow escape of St. Kitts, were no 
 longer a mystery ; and could human eye have 
 searched the Squire's inward heart, it would pro- 
 bably have detected a lurking wish, that the horse 
 had tried the temper of his shoes on the skull 
 and brains which had conceived such a device 
 against " the Heir and Hope of the Hall." 
 
 Under these circumstances, each person of the 
 party having some particular cause of discontent 
 with another, it may easily be conceived, tliat 
 the general hilarity fell far short of the Baronet's 
 
254 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 anticipations. On leaving the inn, Ringwood in- 
 deed could not help mechanically admiring the high 
 spirit and fine action of the beautiful animal that 
 was led towards him ; and for a moment, he looked 
 like Shakspeare's Young Harry, as if about to 
 " witch the world with noble horsemanship ;" but 
 this elasticity of body and spirit vanished as he 
 alighted in the saddle, and the Creole, like any- 
 body's Old Hany, smiled a sardonic smile, to wit- 
 ness the rankling of the well-directed shaft. The 
 Squire was infected by his favourite's gloom ; — 
 Sir Mark had a giievance of his own ; and even 
 the serene mind of Raby was darkened by the 
 shadows of clouds which hung over other heads. 
 
 For some miles the whole company rode almost 
 in silence; at last, an abrupt question from the 
 Baronet revived the old feud. 
 
 " Ringwood, — what name do you think of 
 giving to your new nag, — for luckily. Old Sparks 
 hadn't christened him with any of his ridiculous 
 rumfoozles, or rumptyiddities } " 
 
 " As the Squire names all his horses and dogs 
 to begin with A," replied Ringwood, " I make a 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 255 
 
 rule that all mine shall start with B. I think of 
 calling him Brown Bastard." 
 
 The last two words, and the look, which put 
 them as it were in italics, were not lost on the 
 Creole. His eyes Hterally flashed fire, and as 
 he turned his horse towards Ringwood's, his 
 hand made an involuntary movement upward 
 with his riding-whip, but luckily the motion was 
 too slight to excite notice. 
 
 " Bastard again," he muttered between his 
 teeth, " do you wish to excite me to show, Sir, 
 how I can resent an insult ?" 
 
 " Name your own horses as you please. Sir," 
 retiu*ned Ringwood, in the same under-tone, — 
 his hand mechanically gliding from the butt-end 
 to the top of his whip, " and do not dare to 
 interfere with mine." 
 
 " Bastard eh ?— proper name enough for a colt," 
 said the Squire, unceremoniously thrusting his 
 hack between the enraged cousins. " Don't sup- 
 pose Jiggumbob and Tolderol were ever married, 
 — banns or license ! " 
 
 " This is my quanel, Sir, and I wUl not brook 
 
256 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 meddling," said St. Kitts to the Squire, with the 
 same guarded tone ; but in spite of this caution, 
 and the prudent manoeuvres of Raby, who endea- 
 voured to divert the attention of his father, the 
 Baronet's quick ears had aheady apprised him 
 that there was a quarrel on foot, though he had 
 not discovered its drift. 
 
 He immediately pushed on a little a-head, where 
 he wheeled his horse round, and halting in the 
 middle of the road, with a position and manner of 
 great dignity, he addressed them as they came up 
 three abreast. 
 
 " How is this, lads ? — how is this ? — snarling and 
 wrangling between whelps of the same blood, — I 
 had almost said the same litter ? Is this your 
 respect for yourselves, for each other, for me ? 
 Do you want to hunt these grey hairs," (here 
 he took off his hat,) " to earth, with shame and 
 sorrow ? " 
 
 "Hark to him! hark!" shouted Ned, at the 
 same time doffing his own hat in sign of reverence ; 
 ^' hark to the old one !" 
 
 " Thank ye. Squire, for the halloo !" said the 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 257 
 
 Baronet, " and be so kind as to lead the field at a 
 foot-pace towards the Hall, whilst Raby remains 
 with me." 
 
 In obedience to this command, they all passed 
 on except the younger son, who reined up beside 
 his father ; and as soon as the others were out of 
 sight, Sir Mark commenced his examination. 
 
 " Raby, you know I hate babbling. Put me 
 up at once to the origin of this fall-out between 
 your brother and St. Kitts, for I winded a quarrel 
 better than a hundred yards back." 
 
 " I believe. Sir," answered Raby, " it may all be 
 traced to a letter which my cousin has at this 
 moment in his pocket. It is from Jenkins, the 
 tutor, to youi'self; and as Jenkins is a pedant, and 
 Ringwood is naturally the reverse, I declined to be 
 the bearer of an epistle which probably reflected 
 on my brother. Ringwood refused the letter from 
 the same suspicion, and I believe he feels hurt that 
 St. Kitts undertook to deliver it." 
 
 " A likely cast, Raby," said the Baronet, " and 
 my own observation owns to the scent. — Ride up, 
 man, ride up, and I will soon see if it holds good." 
 
258 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 In a few minutes they rejoined the others, and 
 Sir Mark rode up to the Creole and asked for the 
 letter. 
 
 " I have had a severe struggle, Sir," said the 
 latter, between friendship and conscience, whether 
 to suppress or deliver this unlucky paper, guess- 
 ing the contents to be unpleasant to Ringwood, 
 and I believe friendship would have got the better, 
 — but Raby's mention of it leaves me no alternative." 
 So saying he delivered the letter to the Baronet, 
 who thrust it unopened into his pocket. 
 
 " You hear that, Ringwood," he said, addressing 
 his eldest son. — " Your cousin intended to hush it 
 up. Take to kindness, and shake hands, boys, 
 shake hands at once. — You must pack better to- 
 gether, or it will break my heai:t. I fancied I 
 could cover you all with a sheet." 
 
 " For my own part," said St. Kitts, *^ I am per- 
 fectly ready to forgive and forget any personal 
 cause of offence, — and which possibly originated 
 in my own misapprehension. Will my cousin not 
 say the same, now I have spared him the humili- 
 ation of making the first advances ?" 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 259 
 
 But Ringvvood remained silent. The Squire, 
 however, again rode in between and endeavoured 
 to join their hands, almost pulling the West Indian 
 from his saddle in the attempt. 
 
 " Still mute !" exclaimed the Baronet, rising in 
 wrath. " Don't forget, Ringwood — my temper is 
 spicy — and if I once get in a passion — Zounds, 
 Sir, shake hands at once, or I will dismount you, T 
 will by Jove !" 
 
 " At your command. Sir, I must," answered Ring- 
 wood, reluctantly extending his hand towards his 
 cousin, while a sudden rush of blood to his face 
 showed that a slight smile of triumph in the Creole, 
 had not escaped his notice. " It is your turn to- 
 day," he muttered, " it will be mine to-moiTow." 
 
 "That's well, boys," said Sir Mark, his face 
 beaming with pleasure at what he deemed the re- 
 conciliation. " As for this," he said, taking out the 
 letter, and casting it over the little bridge they were 
 crossing, " the minnows may read it, for me. 
 What is past is past, and I will not run the heel. 
 So if any one here has neglected his duty, let him 
 go on Sunday to church and hark to Dr. Cobb, 
 
260^ TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 and when it comes to ' We have left undone those 
 things we ought to have done, and we have done 
 those things we ought not to have done,' and so 
 forth, let him say Amen, with all his heart, and re- 
 solve to take up and mend for the future." 
 
 The lecture had its due effect on the party for 
 whose benefit it was intended : for Ringwood, 
 naturally well-disposed but thoughtless, from the 
 very first moment that he witnessed the disappoint- 
 ment and vexation of his father, had been framing 
 resolutions to apply himself more diligently to his 
 College studies. He could not forget, however, 
 that the wound in his parent's feelings had been 
 wantonly irritated and probed by the Creole ; 
 whom he regarded therefore with unmitigated hos- 
 tility. The latter, on the contrary, assumed a cheer- 
 ful air, and affected to be oveijoyed at the adjust- 
 ment of their difference. 
 
 " St. Kitts," said the Baronet, " you are a gene- 
 rous fellow. You do not sit frowning on your 
 horse as sulky as a badger, or bristle up and keep 
 yourself to yourself like a hedge-hog." 
 
 " He can play the hypocrite better than I cau^" 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 261 
 
 Ringwooci was about to answer ; but he suppressed 
 the speech, and contented himself with slacking 
 his pace and letting his horse trot alongside his 
 brother's. 
 
 " Thank ye for nothing, Raby," he said so low 
 as not to be overheard. " You had an opportunity 
 just now of backing me with my father ; and see 
 what comes of it — Gip has the call." 
 
 " Indeed, you wrong me,"*' replied Raby, " I said 
 merely that old Jenkins was a pedant and that 
 you were none, — and that St. Kitts had undertaken 
 to deliver his letter, after you and I had decUned." 
 
 " Out of infernal malice," said Ringwood, " and 
 to injure me with my father — you might have 
 pitched in that. When I want a friend, give me 
 an out-and-outer ! Such a friend as I have been 
 to you. Didn't I back you at seven to four for 
 the prize poem — and never hedged ?" 
 
 " But, my dear Ringwood " 
 
 *' Who told you how to lay your money at the 
 mnning-match at Bullington } Who put you up 
 to the trick at the trotting-match that Scamp was 
 meant to win," and Fairplay was not ? Who told 
 
262 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 you of the snug little prize-fight at Headington ? 
 Who took you to Mother Boult's ?/' 
 
 ** My dear Ringwood, I could retort. Who 
 rendered into Latin for you the twentieth Specta- 
 tor ? Who paid your tavern-bill at Pinkie's ? 
 Who stood your friend with the Proctor in the 
 affair of Widow Wakeman ? But this is child's 
 play. Your own temper is in fault. I warned 
 you not to let your quarrel break out before your 
 father ?" 
 
 *' I know you did," said Ringwood, rather soft- 
 ened, " and if I had taken your advice, and 
 hadn't let loose, I should be now in a better 
 place. But I cannot stand nibbling at a hind- 
 leg ; I must go at the head at once. I can't help it 
 — it's in my nature : and I hate St. Kitts as Whop 
 hates vermin.'* 
 
 " There again," said Raby, " you are always 
 in extremes. Is it not possible to dislike St. 
 Kitts without hating him, and wanting to nail 
 him up amongst the vermin on the end of the old 
 bam ?" 
 
 " Faith ! he would not cut a bad figure among 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 263 
 
 the polecats, and stoats, and weazels," said Ring- 
 wood, smiling bitterly at the conceit. " He can 
 run you down, bite viciously, and hang on at 
 your nape, as well as any of 'em ! He would be 
 a jewel of a specimen to rot and stink among the 
 skeletons of Dick's museum !" 
 
 Their conversation was here interrupted by the 
 halt of the advance ; and Sir Mark, riding back 
 to his two sons, desired them to take especial care 
 of the brown woman who was coming along the 
 road, for that Mr. Twigg said she was a witch, 
 and even Justice Rivers was quite at fault about 
 her. As she walked towards them slowly, they 
 had leisure to remark her appearance. She was 
 dressed in faded mom-ning, rather brown than 
 black, through length of wear or exposure to 
 weather; the weeds of a decayed widow, one 
 of those sable beings that seem, like the ravens, to 
 depend on a special Providence for their suste- 
 nance, they have apparently so little earthly 
 means of their own. Her dress, however, though 
 coarse and ill-made, could not conceal the sym- 
 metry of a shape that had belonged to that " or- 
 
264 TYLNEV HALL. 
 
 der of fine forms " which is peculiar to the half- 
 caste females of the AVest Indies. She had the 
 taper waist, the full round limbs, and the grace- 
 ful easy carriage. Moreover she had the abun- 
 dant black hair, curling naturally into ringlets, 
 too inflexible to uncoil themselves at every breath 
 of heat or moisture ; and her eyes were of as dark 
 a hue, black and bright as cannel-coal, and equal- 
 ly apt to emit fire and flame. 
 
 As soon as she came near enough, the Squire, 
 who rode a little a-head, jumped off* his horse, 
 and planted himself before her, holding out what 
 remained of his right hand. 
 
 " Here," he said, ^* sixpen'north of fortune-tell- 
 ing. Won*'t bilk you — cross with silver and all 
 that!" 
 
 " The wise man makes his own fortune," said 
 the woman with great dignity, " and he himself 
 best knows its aspect." 
 
 " High-ropes, eh } " said the 'Squire somewhat 
 abashed by this rebuff". " Won't look at my palm 
 — suppose the two off-fingers make a difference. 
 No matter — welcome to the tizzy " 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 265 
 
 " Give it to your slaves," exclaimed the vroman, 
 witli an imperious wave of the arm and a look of 
 scorn that implied as much contempt for his silver 
 as for Twigg's copper. 
 
 " Egad, boys," said Sir Mark, " I begin to think 
 the Justice is right, and that she comes of good 
 blood. — She reminds me wonderfully of Mrs. 
 What's-her-Name, in the character of Cleopatra. 
 I'll warrant her father was at the very least the 
 King of the Gipsies ! " 
 
 " There is no more Gipsy-blood in my veins, 
 than in that young gentleman's," returned the 
 woman, pointing her finger at the Creole; and 
 gazing so earnestly on his face, that for some 
 minutes she seemed imconscious of any other 
 presence. Her mind evidently turned inward, 
 and she had the abstracted look of a person 
 revolving the past or the future with intense 
 interest. At last she spoke. "Although no 
 gipsy, I have some skill in augury, and if 
 you wlQ favour me, young gentleman, with your 
 hand" 
 
 " Try her, St. Kitts, try her," exclaimed Sir 
 
 VOL. I. N 
 
266 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 Mark, "now we have found her, let us give a 
 good account of her ; let her open, man, and we 
 shall soon see if she gives tongue to th^ right 
 tune." Here he drew St. Kitts aside, adding, in 
 a lower tone, " let her cross your hand with a 
 crown though, for she is not one of the common 
 sort." 
 
 In obedience to this direction, St. Kitts gave 
 her a crown, which she immediately transferred 
 to the huntsman, with the air of one accustomed 
 to bestow such largess ; making Dick stare with 
 as much amazement, as if he had seen with his 
 own eyes a hare tinning into a witch. He lifted 
 his hand as if to touch his hat, but checked his 
 arm midway, — and then sat twirling the coin be- 
 tween his finger and thumb, with a ludicrous look 
 of appeal towards his master; partly in doubt 
 whether he ought to accept it from a distressed 
 gentlewoman, and partly in fear that the money 
 was from the Devil's mint, and would bum a hole 
 in his pocket. 
 
 " Pouch it, Dick ; pouch it !" said Sir Mark, in 
 an aside. " If you don't fancy her herself, you can 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 267 
 
 drink it to the health of the Lancashire Witches, 
 or any others you like." 
 
 Accordingly Dick pocketed the piece, whilst 
 St. Kitts extended his hand to the fortune-teller, 
 who grasped it between her owm, and even kissed 
 it, muttering inaudibly, and at the same time 
 trembhng so that it was visible to the eye, as if 
 feehng, or affecting to feel, the prophetical agita- 
 tions of the ancient sybils. 
 
 " There is a black cloud," she said, " over your 
 star, — ^but there is a bright sun in store. Remem- 
 ber me. The past you do not remember — the 
 present you do not understand — the future you 
 cannot foresee. But I know it all. Remember 
 me. You have but one present trouble; and it 
 concerns a gold ring for a lady's finger." 
 
 " Hark to Gipsy !" shouted the Baronet ; " the 
 old story, by Jove ! To her ! St. Kitts ! — to her, 
 — to her again ! What odds she don't name the 
 lady?" 
 
 " I hope. Sir," said St. Kitts, " you are already 
 satisfied of her abilities as a Pythoness. So far 
 from thinking of mamage, I give you my honour 
 
 n2 
 
268 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 I am not even an hour gone in courtship. But 
 she is like all her tribe; a gold ring and a. bride- 
 cake are their staple commodities."Y^''?"^''^^*'<^'^'''^ 
 
 " Not so fast, young man," said the fortune- 
 teller. " There are two ends tO* a kridt^^ftnd two 
 intei*pretations to an oracle. Remember me. 
 Some lovers may long to see the third finger of 
 their lady's left hand in a golden circle, — and 
 some sons may wish that their mothers had worn 
 the same emblem. Remember me !" 
 
 " The devil remember you V said the Creole, 
 who almost imagined that the evil one had thrown 
 this augury in his path, — and striking the spurs 
 into his steed, he gallopped some hundred yards 
 a-head, as if to escape the comments of his com- 
 panions. The woman silently followed his course 
 with her eyes, till he disappeared behind a turn 
 of the road, and then, without deigning to notice 
 any of the questions that were put to her, resumed 
 her walk in the opposite direction. 
 
 " Egad it looks like witchcraft though !" ex- 
 claimed the Baronet : " she knew where to have 
 him, — and bolted him like a rabbit! Not that 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 269 
 
 Fm fond of fen^eting into futurity : it damps a 
 man's courage, to see his dangers and misfortunes 
 so long beforehand; and is apt to make him 
 boggle and stick in the middle, when a gallant 
 charge would have carried him through.'' 
 
 "It was nothing but chance, father," said Ra- 
 by. " \Vhat Shakspeai'e calls a random bolt. I 
 have often had my own fortune told, — for the 
 Gipsies are an interesting race, and what I had 
 read of them excited my curiosity to know more 
 of them. These fortune-tellers are excellent phy- 
 siognomists, — you saw how naiTowly she watched 
 the looks of St. Kitts — for they know in an in- 
 stant, by your face, when they have touched on 
 the right string. Then again they are very vo- 
 luble, and have always some recuning phrase, 
 like that ^ Remember me,' which gives them time 
 for invention. Besides it is a very common thing 
 for them " 
 
 " D d if I won't," ejaculated the Squire, 
 
 rousing suddenly from a fit of meditation 
 
 " knows, may be, who's to win the Darby !" 
 
 In compliance with this suggestion he imme- 
 
270 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 diately turned his horse round and rode after the 
 Sybil, determined to ask her a few questions for 
 the benefit of his betting-book, while the rest of 
 the party pulled up and waited to see the issue of 
 the conference. The woman had gained the brow 
 of a gentle hill before she was overtaken, and as 
 she stood in relief against the sky they could see 
 every motion. By the action of her hands and 
 arms it was evident that she was talking with 
 great vehemence, and the Squire, who had dis- 
 mounted, by his gestures was equally importunate, 
 till at last as she turned to go, they saw him 
 catch hold of her cloak, as if to detain her by force. 
 Her right arm immediately rose at full stretch 
 above her head, and a flash came from the hand 
 in the sun-shine like the glancing of steel. The 
 blow however did not descend: the garment was re- 
 leased, the woman disappeared instantly behind the 
 brow of the hill ; — and the Squire, remounting his 
 horse, came slowly back to rejoin his companions. 
 " There you come Squire," cried Sir Mark, " with 
 your head drooping and your tail down, like a 
 greyhound that has lost his hare !" 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 271 
 
 " Confound her," said Ned, with a smart slap 
 of his riding-whip on his boot. — " Wants a cage 
 and a keeper — worse than ten tiger-cats or cat-a- 
 moun tains — looks scratches, and talks bites. 
 Never met an uglier customer — never — never — 
 never ! " 
 
 "We thought we saw the gleam of a knife," 
 remarked Ring^vood. 
 
 " Ay; boy," said the Squire, — " long blade — 
 sharp point — fit to kill a porker. Did its share of 
 work, may be, at Hazel Bridge — no saying. A 
 regular vicious jade — would turn a man to clod 
 and sticking, in the snap of a flint ! " 
 
 "You should have tried her with gold," said 
 Raby; "these gipsies well know how to raise 
 their market. They reject copper in the hope of 
 silver ; and refuse silver in expectation of gold." 
 
 " Had gold on the hook, man," replied the 
 Squire, " but no go. — ^Wouldn't rise at a guinea. 
 Very odd, — won't take money, — don't patter 
 slang, — long knife, — and no fork to it ! " 
 
 " I am afraid," said the Baronet, with a serious 
 shake of his head, " she has learned the trick of 
 
272 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 stabbing in the county jail. The Justice sent her 
 there for a month to beat hemp." 
 
 " Some day, hemp will beat Aer," said Ned, with 
 a knowing nod and wink. 
 
 " I cannot say that I like that hemp-beating,** 
 said Sir Mark ; " it only teaches them how to ham- 
 mer people's heads. I remember once looking in 
 at them at work, and a hang-dog set they were, and 
 one rogue in particular. There, said he at eveiy 
 thump of his mallet, that's for So-and-so's rascally 
 old brains. And so he went on with a bang a- 
 piece for the whole Bench. But Magistrates are 
 as fond of their prisons as Fox-hunters of their 
 kennels ; only they can never have their pack nu- 
 merous enough of all sorts and sizes, whereas a 
 master of hounds likes 'em well-bred and select." 
 
 " Good," said the Squire. 
 
 "Besides," continued the Baronet, "the dogs 
 
 get a good education, and learn how to behave and 
 
 make themselves useful when they are let out; 
 
 which is far from the case with human prisoners." 
 
 " True as Gospel," said Ned. 
 
 ** It is quite an idea of my own," Sir Mark went 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 278 
 
 on, " but it would be better for the nation if the 
 visiting magistrates would visit a well-managed 
 kennel, by way of example, before they inspect 
 their jails." 
 
 " Ay," said the Squire — " regular meals — 
 nothing but water — no riot — no giving tongue, that 
 is, cursing and swearing— long whip — plenty of 
 work — tree and a halter for them that won't mend." 
 
 "The Justice laughs at my notion," said the 
 Baronet, ^« but between ourselves, if any thing 
 should happen to disable Dick, and a vacancy 
 occurs, I'll try my interest in the county to get 
 him made Master of the House of Correction." 
 
 They now overtook the Creole, who had recovered 
 his composure, and had sobered his pace to a walk, 
 in order to allow the others to come up. As they 
 advanced, he purposely drew towards the side of 
 the road which would place him next to Ringwood, 
 in order to maintain the credit he had obtained for 
 generosity and forbeai'ance. 
 
 " I am afraid I have appeared very foolish," he 
 said, " but there are certain subjects which have a 
 peculiar sting." _i,, ^^^,. 
 
 N 3 
 
274 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 " A sting indeed," said Sir Mark. " I never 
 saw such a start off but once, and that was on 
 Sorrel, when the boys had been stu-ring up the 
 old wasp's nest in the lane. I verily believe he 
 went through all the capers of the College Hornpipe. 
 But spur on, boys, spur on, I see the Twiggs' car- 
 riage yonder turning off for the Hall." 
 
 The Ex-Sheriff's equipage was indeed entering 
 the avenue, but at a very unusual pace ; for the 
 coachman had flogged his horses into a gallop, a 
 sure sign, in the Baronet's opinion, that the lady 
 was not of the party. Having the advantage of a 
 good start, the vehicle arrived at its destination 
 some ten minutes before the horsemen; but to the 
 surprise of Sir Mark, he saw from afar the two 
 ladies run up the steps, and dart into the house 
 like a couple of scared rabbits bobbing into a bur- 
 row. Suspecting some unusual occuiTence, he 
 pushed on at speed, and on entering the Hall the 
 first person he encountered was old Deborah, pant- 
 ing along vrith a glass of cold water, her breath 
 just sufficing to inform her master that " Mrs. 
 Twigg — was in — a — fit !" 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 275 
 
 Fits by the way are strange things. Like the 
 hen bird which has the faculty of retaining her 
 egg till an appropriate nest is built and ready for 
 its reception, so a lady seems to have the power of 
 bottling up her hysterics till there is help at hand, 
 with a chance of hartshorn and water, and every 
 fitting accompaniment. As Major Oakley says, in 
 the Jealous Wife, " Did you ever hear of her fall- 
 ing into a fit when you were not by ? Was she 
 ever found in convulsions in her closet ? " 
 
 Accordingly Mrs. Twigg had postponed her 
 swoon while in the carriage, or on the steps, or the 
 stairs, but the moment she found herself in the 
 drawing-room, with a comfortable elbow-chair 
 under her, she quietly closed her eyes, dropped her 
 arms, and " went off like a lamb." 
 
'276 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 " Death and destruction ! Are all the horrors of air, fire, and water, 
 to be levell'd only at me ? Am I only to be singled out for gunpowder- 
 plots, combustibles and conflagration? Here it is — an incendiary 
 
 letter dropped at my door. 
 
 ***** 
 
 I'm so frightened I scarce know whether I sit, stand, or go. Perhaps 
 
 this moment I'm treading on lighted matches, blazing brimstone, and 
 
 barrels of gunpowder. They are preparing to blow me up into the 
 
 clouds. Murder ! We shall all be burnt in our beds ! We shall all 
 
 be burnt in our beds !" 
 
 Croaker. 
 
 " I have met with so many axidents, surprisals, and terriflcations, that 
 I am in a perfect fantigo, and believe I shall never be my own self 
 again." 
 
 Win. Jenkins. 
 
 Just as the Baronet entered the drawing-room, 
 Mrs. Twigg began to give signs of returning ani- 
 mation. Her snub nose, almost excoriated by 
 smelling-salts, worked with convulsive twitchings ; 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 277 
 
 and as her daughter fanned her, she gave at every 
 puff of air a gasp Uke a gudgeon ; at last she opened 
 her eyes, and sat staring about her Uke the Lady 
 in Comus, in the Enchanted Chair. 
 
 " Upon my honour. Sir Mark," said Twigg, " I 
 am really ashamed of this rumpus. It's so ridi- 
 culous having these family things in a strange 
 house. Curse it. Madam, if you must faint, I wish 
 you'd contrive to do it at home ! " 
 
 "Really Pa', you're rather unfeeling," lisped 
 Miss Twigg. "When insensibility affects the 
 nerves, we can't always faint where we like." 
 
 " That's all gammon," said Twigg, in the ver^ 
 spirit of Major Oakley. " You take precious good 
 care never to flop down in a kennel ; and catch 
 you swooning away into a fish pond, or having a 
 kicking fit in the fender. But, says, you, that 
 would spoil one's clothes." . i,f .f ' 
 
 " It was the cruel gallopping," whined the lady, 
 her senses returning, as well as every thing else, 
 except her colour, which had never flown. 
 
 " And high time to gallop, Madam," answered 
 Twigg, " when people have a volcano under their 
 
278 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 feet ! Things are come to a crisis. Sir Mark Tyr- 
 rel, Baronet ! — Mrs. Hamilton, Madam — we live 
 in very awful times, very awful indeed ! " 
 
 " My dear fellow hold hard," said the Baronet, 
 laying his hand on Twigg's arm, and whispering 
 into his ear, " You will have her into fits again 
 if you don't hold hard, for she's amiss and out of 
 heart." 
 
 " Let her faint," said Twigg, elevating his voice 
 to the proper pitch for a forum. " The hour is come 
 when people must not think of females and fits. 
 The very thing my old friend Jack Dawe said in 
 the Common Council is coming to pass. A rise- 
 up of servants against masters, and servants against 
 mistresses — of people with nothing, against people 
 of property. There's been a dead set at us ever 
 since we came to Hollington." 
 
 "To be sure," said Sir Mark gravely, *'l'm 
 afraid some of our democrats and demagogues, 
 with their speeches and so forth, have done us no 
 good in our public principles. There is a set of 
 people in the parish I know, that are all for liberty 
 and equality." 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 279 
 
 " Read this, Sir Mark," exclaimed Twigg, draw- 
 ing a letter out of his pocket. " If any body wants 
 conviction let them read this, and lay their hands 
 on their hearts, and then say ar'n't these revo- 
 lutionary levelling times, or ar'n't they not ? Let 
 them just read this," he continued, striking the 
 letter with his fore -finger, but still holding the 
 paper so that its perusal should not interrupt his 
 oration, "Here's proof, ocular proof! The reign 
 of anarchy, and the reign of ten'or, and all sorts of 
 reigns, is set in ; and social order, and all that sort 
 of thing, is to be upset, and subverted, and topsy- 
 turvied. Here am I — threatened with fire, and 
 fury, and brimstone. And why ? I ask why ? — Why, 
 says you, because I'm a man of property !" 
 
 " Very shocking times, indeed," said Sir Mark, 
 ineffectually holding out his hand for the letter. 
 
 " It's true. Sir Mark TpTcl, Baronet, every word 
 and syllable of it," said Mrs. Twigg, with a shake 
 of the head, very like Lord Burleigh's in the Critic. 
 
 " What's to become of Church and State V con- 
 tinued Twigg, evidently fancying himself on his 
 legs before the Common Council. " What's to be- 
 
280 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 come of the Bible and Crown ? What's to become 
 of us all, when the pillars of the constitution is 
 pulled down, and the pinnacles of national pros- 
 perity, and all that is ancient, all that is old, and all 
 that is venerable, is trod under foot by tag-rag-and- 
 bobtail ?" 
 
 " If the paper contains any such plot," said Sir 
 Mark, again attempting to take it, " I should say 
 it ought to be forwarded to the Secretary of State." 
 
 " That's what I say," sai d Mrs. Twigg. " Nothing 
 but a troop of Life Guards can keep us safe in our 
 shoes. I am glad we came here for advice." 
 
 " All I ask," continued Twigg, " is one question, 
 and that is this. — How are people of property to 
 act, when thus attacked in retail,— I mean to say 
 detail ? Here am I — worth we'll say, a hundred 
 thousand pounds, — here I am, and unless I come 
 down fifty pounds to a nameless anonymous 
 assassin, I'm told to look to my stables, for the 
 scoundrels have made matches, and bought brimr 
 stone, and they'll have blood, blood, blood !" 
 
 ** If that is expressed in the writing," said Sir 
 Mark, ^iti is a regular threatening lett^^'^r-b^re 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 281 
 
 he made a fresh motion for it, — " and our friend the 
 Justice would know how to deal with the author 
 according to law." 
 
 " Every word of it is there," said Mrs. Twigg, 
 " the three bloods and all. I've read it over and 
 over, till I have almost got it by heart. I'm sure 
 I wish a whitlow on every finger that had a hand 
 in it. They have put Mr. T. in such a twitter that " — 
 
 " Hold your confounded fool's tongue, Madam," 
 exclaimed Twigg. " Nobody was in a twitter but 
 yourself. But here it is, sir Mark— read it and 
 judge, or maybe you had better read it aloud for 
 the benefit of Mrs. Hamilton. If it don't smell 
 like a house a-fire, my name's not Twigg 1" 
 
 Thus appealed to, the Baronet took the incendi- 
 ary epistle, and began in a very audible and solemn 
 voice to read as follows : — the Twiggs severally 
 making faces and gestures of horror as they con- 
 ceived themselves to be alluded to personally in 
 the denunciations. 
 " Sur, 
 
 " Wen this cums to hand you will 
 soon sea Revenge. Hell-fire Dick nose what 
 
282 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 to doo. 1 have bought Brimstun for yew. 
 Mersey his not to be had. Their ar lots of 
 Matchis maid I can tell yew fiiry & Ruin 
 Bloodsucker & Blazes dam Mister Burril 
 as bean dun brown & mind yew dont git 
 the saim send me fifty yeller boys and I 
 will make yew safe yew dont no wat yew 
 ar standin on yew may hav havvock or not 
 as yew like but yew had better cum down. 
 Look sharp to yure stabil & mind my wurds 
 bloods the thing blood Blood Blood. 
 
 " Yure's to command, 
 
 " J. P." 
 " P. S. That yung Puppy of yures deserves 
 hangin and soe does Madam. I wunder 
 yew can keep sich a Bitch. Has for Matilda 
 we ar goin to cut her throte & bile her." 
 " There " exclaimed Twigg, at the conclusion 
 of the letter, " there's no mistake in that ! " 
 
 " Did you ever hear, Su- Mark TpTcl, Baro- 
 net," asked Mrs. Twigg, " such horrid blood- 
 thirsty language, and scandalous vipertupera- 
 tions ? About myself I can't repeat, but as regards 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 283 
 
 poor 'Tilda, what can she have done that she's to 
 swelter in her gore ? " 
 
 " Upon my honour, Madam," replied the Ba- 
 ronet, " if it's no offence to say so, you're all 
 flourishing without any occasion !" 
 
 " Sir Mark Tyrrel, Baronet," said the lady, 
 " you astonish me. All flourishing ! I wish we 
 was ! " 
 
 " My dear madam," said Sir Mark, " the case 
 is this. You receive a letter, a regular puzzler, 
 and it makes you all throw up " 
 
 "Indeed, I confess, for one," said the lady, 
 " that it gave me a kind of a turn." 
 
 " Well, then," continued the figurative Fox- 
 hunter, *' after spreading this way and that, at 
 last there is a challenge " 
 
 " I never thought of that," exclaimed Twigg, 
 " but of course Sir Mark Tyrrel, Baronet, you 
 know more of challenges than I do. A man that 
 has had to be his own shopman, couldn't be ex- 
 pected to go out if he was called out. Of course 
 it's some Irish Dragoon officer, for I never read 
 any thing in such a blunderbuss style in ray life. 
 
284 TYLNEY hall;t 
 
 It's very odd though, says you, considering I 
 haven't been a gentleman long enough to offend 
 anybody." ^'""-^ " 
 
 " My good Sir," said the Baronet, " you are 
 quite at fault." iuodiiyf puddhisoit 
 
 " Well, well," said Twigg, submissively, " if 
 you say so, I'll apologize, let him be who he will, 
 and that's saying a good deal for a man of n^" 
 property." a^b^ia ^iab 
 
 "Zounds, man," exclaimed Sir Mark, "you're 
 more bewildered than an owl in daylight ! You 
 couldn't be more stupified and abroad, if all the 
 cock-sparrows of the parish were mobbing about 
 your ears. There isn't a word about fighting in 
 it, sword or pistol ! " 
 
 " The Lord be praised ! " ejaculated Mrs. Twigg. 
 " Mr. T. was never concerned in any honourable 
 affair in his life ; and so little used as he is to 
 duelling, and letting off things, if no worse hap- 
 pened, he'd be sure to shoot away his own fingers 
 or something." 
 
 " It's a pity Pa' don't learn," said Miss Twigg, 
 '' as shooting is so genteel. Every gentleman at 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 285 
 
 Holliiigton goes out with his guii; and really it 
 looks a great deal more becoming for a man of for- 
 tune, than a great gTeen umbrella." 
 ^^^^^ That's what I say," added Mrs. Twigg ; " evejy 
 blessed day. To be sure it's late in life for Mr. T. 
 to learn shooting — I wish he had belonged to the 
 volunteers !" 
 
 : " Volunteers be hanged ! " said Twigg. " What 
 could one volunteer do at a house a-fire ? He 
 couldn't surround the property could he ?" 
 
 " You mean to say then, Sir, that the Hive is to 
 be burnt down and gutted ?" enquired Mrs. Twigg, 
 witli a rueful look at the Baronet. 'mnpti ojU 
 
 " My dear Madam,'' said Sir Mark, '^ I mean to 
 say, you're quite at fault about the letter. There 
 is not a word in it, except about dogs and horses. 
 1 have Havoc and Revenge, and fifty s^ph.p^i^QS, 
 in my own kennel — ask Kate there ! ",, . ,y ^- 
 
 " 1 have the pleasure of saying, Madam," .said 
 Mrs* Hamilton, " that I have seen many similai- 
 letters from Richard, the huntsman, to my brother." 
 
 " To be sure she has," said the Baionet. "But 
 here comes the Squire, — he will pick it out in a 
 moment." , ^ ju^;U.^ - Ji.^ zu; , 
 
286 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 In fact, having allowed a certain time on his 
 watch for the fit to be done in, honest Ned at 
 this juncture entered the room, accompanied by 
 Ringwood, Raby, and the Creole, who were 
 severally introduced, and Mrs. Hamilton saluted 
 her nephews with great affection. The inquest on 
 the letter was then resumed. 
 
 " Here, Squire," said the Baronet, " read this 
 letter, and oblige us with a key to its meaning. 
 Twigg here sniffs fire and brimstone, and swears 
 the Hive is going to be treated like a wasp's nest." 
 
 ''Old Jack Pike, eh? — know his scrawl," said 
 the Squire, as he glanced at the hand- writing; 
 but he had no sooner got through the first sen- 
 tence, than he began to slap his pocket, — " know 
 it, eh? — to be sure I do, — about Revenge and 
 Havoc, and the matches." 
 
 "Yes, and blood, blood, blood," said Mrs. 
 Twigg, speaking hastily, ** andfiiry and ruin, and 
 cutting throats, and burning, and doing us brown. 
 You think as we do. Sir. It was dropt this very 
 morning. Sir, dropped at our own door ! " 
 
 " Like enough. Ma'am," said Ned, — " dropped 
 it myself,— called at the Hive this morning,— asked 
 
TYLNEY HALL. 287 
 
 by young Twigg to look at a puppy, — can show 
 you the cover, — E. Somerville, Esq., and all 
 that, dated a month ago." 
 
 " Then it has nothing to do \^'ith murder, and 
 arson, and extorting money ? " enquu'ed Twigg. 
 
 " Devil a word," answered the Squire, " all 
 about long dogs and tits. Honest fellow, old 
 Jack, — wanted me to come down to a coursing 
 meeting." 
 
 " Thank God ! " exclaimed Mrs. Twigg, solemnly, 
 — " here's a load off all our minds and spirits ! " 
 
 " Oh it's like a calm after a storm at Margate," 
 said Miss Matilda. 
 
 " To be sure it would have been a thousand 
 pities," said Mrs. Twigg. " You must know, Mrs. 
 Hamilton, we have been plotting and planning 
 the most delightful feat shampeter, — but, after the 
 letter, Mr. T. said it must all be given up, — or at 
 all events done in-doors." 
 
 " I know I did," said Twigg, " and so would 
 any one that stood in my shoes, as a man of pro- 
 perty, and the bull's-eye of the whole plot. It's 
 all yery pleasant, for some people to be horn- 
 piping on lawns, — or eating tarts under a tent, — 
 
^8 TYLNEY HALL. 
 
 01* drinking syllabubs in summer-houses ; but it 
 isn't quite so pleasant, for a man that has toiled all 
 his life, to be killed on his own freehold grounds, 
 liefore he had time to enjoy his affluence. May be 
 shoit-^^ says you, from behind a tree, or stabbed 
 il^- a ruffian out of a bush, Hke G. Barnwell, 
 Esquire, of Camberwell Grove." 
 ..;Jhe conversation now became general; and 
 after the lapse of about an hour. The Humble 
 Bee returned with his family to tlie Hive: a 
 httle dissatisfied, indeed, with their own sagacity 
 and penetration ; but infinitely delighted to find 
 that they might hold their Bartiemy Fair on the 
 lawn, without reckoning on a Swing. 
 
 ei;d qf vol. i^ p > . 
 
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 blifow c T bisa '\hib i woiii 
 
 /,rl Jolq oloriw 3fit *lo 9fW(Tod orft bas ,ft*ioq 
 
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