ancy the havoc of such a strife! but all had been
cleared up before our return. Also, it is memorable (and I saw it
myself) that a hard-pressed stag from Sir Gilbert Heathcote's hunt took
refuge in our harness-room,--to the extreme horror of a gardener's boy,
who thought it was a mad donkey,--and no wonder, for as those brave
barbarian sportsmen get the antlers sawn off for fear of wounds to
themselves or their nobler dogs, the poor scared creature with its
uncrowned head and loppity ears is very donkey-like.

Let me give another like homely anecdote of past days.

We are all now so wrapt in security as country dwellers, guarded by the
rural police everywhere, that the following ludicrous incident may seem
hardly worth a word; but in the good old days, when poor Jack was such a
highway brigand that my nurses feared to take the children off the
premises, and when burglars were not infrequent callers at remote
residences, what happened long ago, on a certain dark winter's night, at
Albury, may amuse. Long after all had gone to bed, we heard with
trepidation stealthy steps crunching the snow round the house, and
_something_ that now and then touched the ground-floor doors and
windows, as if quietly trying to get in: at last _it_ fumbled at the
ancient hanging handle of the outside kitchen-door! Now was the time for
Paterfamilias to show his pluck, in the universal scare; so, armed
_cap-a-pied_, with candles held in the rear by the terrified household,
he valorously drew the bolts and flung open the heavy oaken door,--to
greet--his children's donkey, escaped somehow from its stable, and
trying to get indoors that cold night for warmth. Laugh as we might, and
as you may, the test of courage was all the same; and if this donkey
story is pounced upon by some critic or comic as a weak link in my chain
of autobiography, I only hope he will behave as bravely if a real
ruffian tries his doors and windows by night; by no means an improbable
hypothesis in these days of communistic radicalism.

The old house itself may deserve a word. It came to me as a--shall I
say?--matrimony, from my mother; if patrimony means from a father, why
not matrimony from a mother? her great-uncle, Anthony Devis, having
bought it in 1780. He was a remarkable man in his way and before his
age; a good landscape painter (as Pilkington avouches), a collector of
pictures and curiosities,--mostly sold by executors at his death, aged
eighty-nine, though a full