.

"You did me great honour to mistake me for a sheriff's-officer, cousin,"
says Harry, with great gravity, sitting up in his tall nightcap.

"Gad! I thought it was Nathan, and was going to send you souse into the
river. But I ask your pardon. You see I had been drinking at the Bell at
Hexton, and the punch is good at the Bell at Hexton. Hullo! you, Davis!
a bowl of punch; d'you hear?"

"I have had my share for to-night, cousin, and I should think you have,"
Harry continues, always in the dignified style.

"You want me to go, Cousin What's-your-name, I see," Mr. William said,
with gravity. "You want me to go, and they want me to come, and I didn't
want to come. I said, I'd see him hanged first,--that's what I said. Why
should I trouble myself to come down all alone of an evening, and look
after a fellow I don't care a pin for? Zackly what I said. Zackly what
Castlewood said. Why the devil should he go down? Castlewood says,
and so said my lady, but the Baroness would have you. It's all the
Baroness's doing, and if she says a thing, it must be done; so you must
just get up and come." Mr. Esmond delivered these words with the most
amiable rapidity and indistinctness, running them into one another, and
tacking about the room as he spoke. But the young Virginian was in
great wrath. "I tell you what, cousin," he cried, "I won't move for the
Countess, or for the Baroness, or for all the cousins in Castlewood."
And when the landlord entered the chamber with the bowl of punch, which
Mr. Esmond had ordered, the young gentleman in bed called out fiercely
to the host, to turn that sot out of the room.

"Sot, you little tobacconist! Sot, you Cherokee!" screams out Mr.
William. "Jump out of bed, and I'll drive my sword through your body.
Why didn't I do it to-day when I took you for a bailiff--a confounded
pettifogging bum-bailiff!" And he went on screeching more oaths and
incoherencies, until the landlord, the drawer, the hostler, and all the
folks of the kitchen were brought to lead him away. After which Harry
Warrington closed his tent round him in sulky wrath, and, no doubt,
finally went fast to sleep.

My landlord was very much more obsequious on the next morning when he
met his young guest, having now fully learned his name and quality.
Other messengers had come from the castle on the previous night to bring
both the young gentlemen home, and poor Mr. William, it appeared, had
returned in a wheelbarrow, being not altog