reature
sketched his unkempt head, and loudly wished that its owner was a
bandit; more than one bright eye discovered beauty in his open
countenance--though a little soap and water might have made it more
distinguishable. Well--well--honest Ben--they looked, and wisely looked,
at the frank and friendly mind hidden under that rough carcase, and
little wonder that they loved it.

Now, to all this stream of hearty English sympathy, the kind and proper
feeling of young Sir John resolved to give a right direction. His
fashionable friends were gone, except Silliphant and Poynter, both good
fellows in the main, and all the better for the absence (among others)
of that padded old debauchee, Sir Richard Hunt, knight of the order of
St. Sapphira--that frivolous inanity, Lord George Pypp--and that
professed gentleman of gallantry, Mr. Harry Mynton. The follies and the
vices had decamped--had scummed off, so to speak--leaving the more
rectified spirits behind them, to recover at leisure, as best they
might, from all that ferment of dissipation. So, then, there was now
neither ridicule, nor interest, to stand in the way of a young and
wealthy heir's well-timed schemes of generosity.

Well-timed they were, and Sir John knew it, though calculation seldom
had a footing in his warm and heedless heart; but he could not shut his
eyes to the fact, that the state of feeling among his hereditary
labourers was any thing but pleasant. In truth, owing to the desperate
malpractices of Quarles and Jennings, perhaps no property in the kingdom
had got so ill a name as Hurstley: discontent reigned paramount;
incendiary fires had more than once occurred; threatening notices, very
ill-spelt, and signed by one _soi-disant_ Captain Blood, had been
dropped, in dead of winter, at the door-sills of the principal farmers;
and all the other fruits of long-continued penury, extortion, and
mis-government, were hanging ripe upon the bough--a foul and fatal
harvest.

Therefore, did the kind young landlord, who had come to live among his
own peasantry, resolve, not more nobly than wisely, to seize an
opportunity so good as this, for restoring, by a stroke of generous
policy, peace and content on his domain. No doubt, the baronet rejoiced,
as well he might, at the honourable acquittal of innocence, and the
mysteries of murder now cleared up; he made small secret of his
satisfaction at the doom of Jennings; and, as for Bridget Quarles, by
all he could learn of