these
strange humours on the part of Jack, believing that this new-born zeal
on his part was in the main conscientious, though he could not help
thinking it at times sufficiently whimsical and preposterous. He had
even gone so far, occasionally, as to send Jack a list of those to whom
he proposed giving the usherships, accompanied with a polite note, in
some such terms as these, "Squire Bull presents his respects, and begs
his good friend Jack will read over the enclosed list, and take the
trouble of choosing for himself;" a request with which Jack was always
ready to comply. And, further, as Jack had always a great hankering
after little-goes and penny subscriptions of every kind, and was
eternally trumpeting forth some new nostrum or _scheme_ of this kind, as
he used to call it, the Squire had been prevailed upon to purchase from
him a good many tickets for these schemes from time to time, for which
he always paid in hard cash, though I have never heard that any of them
turned up prizes, except it may have been to Jack himself.

Jack, as we have said, grew bolder as the Squire became more complying,
thinking that, in the matter of these appointments, as he had once got
his hand in, it would be his own fault if he could not contrive to
wriggle in his whole body. It so happened, too, that just about the very
time that one of John's usherships became vacant, one of those
atrabilious and hypochondriac fits came over Jack, with which, as we
have said, he was periodically afflicted, and which, though they
certainly unsettled his brain a little, only served, as in the case of
other lunatics, to render him, during the paroxysm, more cunning,
inventive, and mischievous. After moving about in a moping way for a day
or two--mumbling in corners, and pretending to fall on his knees, in his
old fashion, in the midst of the street, he suddenly got up, flung his
broad-brimmed beaver into the kennel, trampled his wig in the dirt, so
as to expose his large ears as of old, ran home, pulled his rusty black
doublet out of the chest where it had lain for years, squeezing it on as
he best could--for he had got somewhat corpulent in the mean time--and
thus transfigured, he set out to consult the village attorney, with whom
it was observed he remained closeted for several hours, turning over
Burns' Justice, and perusing an office-copy of his indenture with the
Squire--a planetary conjunction from which those who were astrologically
given bode