stered.

"With your honour's gracious permission, I would beg to call your
attention to a few notes in the margin concerning the exact position of
affairs, if your honour will listen to them."

Master Jock intimated that he would undertake to do as much as that.

"To begin, then, the Kakadi estate this year yielded twelve thousand
bushels of pure wheat, consequently, the richest soil scarcely produced
sufficient grain to pay for the expense of cultivating it."

"It was a bad year, you know," objected Master Jock. "The corn was
levelled with the ground by hailstorms in the spring, and there was so
much rain afterwards that it sprouted in the stack."

"That, indeed, is what your agent said," returned Mr. Peter; "but he
could have insured against hail at Pressburg, and there's such an
enormously big barn on the estate, that the whole crop could have been
safely housed, and then there would have been no fear of its sprouting."

"Very well, Master Peter, go on! Another time things shall be
different; you may rely upon me for that."

"The twelve thousand bushels of corn were sold at nine florins the
bushel to a corn-dealer of Raab, I see, thus making a total of one
hundred and eight thousand florins, although I notice from the
newspapers that good wheat was selling all the time at Pest at twelve
florins the bushel, and the corn might easily have been transported
thither, for, owing to the inundations, the oxen had no work to do."

"Yes; but those very inundations carried away the bridge, so that it was
impossible to cross the Theiss."

"It was a pity, truly, that the water carried away the bridge, but if
the dyke had been kept in proper repair, the water would not have got at
the bridge."

"Never mind; rely upon me in the future. Go on!"

"The millet-seed, it is said, got musty from waiting too long for
purchasers, so that we could only get eight thousand florins for it.
Now, that is a misstatement. I know as a fact that there was no rain
just then; but the agent, in order that he might attend a christening,
stacked the crop so hastily that it got black and sour from heat."

"No, really! And would you, as a Christian man, I ask, have the agent
postpone the baptism of his son even for the sake of all the millet-seed
in the world? Leave that to me, and go on!"

"The water carried away the hay because, just in the middle of
harvest-time, your honour required the services of every man capable of
holding a hay-fork