stoks!" Mr. Stirn was much too vigilant a right-hand man, much
too zealous a friend of law and order, not to regard such proceedings
with horror and alarm. And when the Squire came into his dressing-room
at half-past seven, his butler (who fulfilled also the duties of valet)
informed him with a mysterious air, that Mr. Stirn had something "very
particular to communicate, about a most howdacious midnight 'spiracy and
'sault."

The Squire stared, and bade Mr. Stirn be admitted.

"Well?" cried the Squire, suspending the operation of stropping his
razor.

Mr. Stirn groaned.

"Well, man, what now!"

"I never knowed such a thing in this here parish afore," began Mr.
Stirn, "and I can only 'count for it by s'posing that them foreign
Papishers have been semminating"--

"Been what?"

"Semminating--"

"Disseminating, you blockhead--disseminating what?"

"Damn the stocks," began Mr. Stirn, plunging right _in medias res_, and
by a fine use of one of the noblest figures in rhetoric.

"Mr. Stirn!" cried the Squire, reddening, "did you say 'Damn the
stocks?"--damn my new handsome pair of stocks!"

"Lord forbid, sir; that's what _they_ say: that's what they have digged
on it with knives and daggers, and they have stuffed mud in its four
holes, and broken the capital of the elewation."

The Squire took the napkin off his shoulder, laid down strop and razor;
he seated himself in his arm-chair majestically, crossed his legs, and
in a voice that affected tranquillity, said:

"Compose yourself, Stirn; you have a deposition to make, touching an
assault upon--can I trust my senses?--upon my new stocks. Compose
yourself--be calm. NOW! What the devil is come to the parish?"

"Ah, sir, what indeed?" replied Mr. Stirn: and then, laying the
fore-finger of the right hand on the palm of the left, he narrated the
case.

"And, whom do you suspect? Be calm now, don't speak in a passion. You
are a witness, sir--a dispassionate, unprejudiced witness. Zounds and
fury! this is the most insolent, unprovoked, diabolical--but whom do you
suspect, I say?"

Stirn twirled his hat, elevated his eyebrows, jerked his thumb over his
shoulder, and whispered, "I hear as how the two Papishers slept at your
honor's last night."

"What, dolt! do you suppose Dr. Rickeybockey got out of his warm bed to
bung up the holes in my new stocks?"

"Noa; he's too cunning to do it himself, but he may have been
semminating. He's mighty thick with Parson Dale,