experience of
the villager, the boy was not dressed like a young gentleman. Leonard's
notions of such aristocratic costume were naturally fashioned upon the
model of Frank Hazeldean. They represented to him a dazzling vision of
snow-white trousers and beautiful blue coats and incomparable cravats.
Now the dress of this stranger, though not that of a peasant or of a
farmer, did not in any way correspond with Lenny's notion of the costume
of a young gentleman. It looked to him highly disreputable: the coat
was covered with mud, and the hat was all manner of shapes, with a gap
between the side and crown.

Lenny was puzzled, till it suddenly occurred to him that the gate
through which the boy had passed was in the direct path across the park
from a small town, the inhabitants of which were in very bad odour at
the Hall,--they had immemorially furnished the most daring poachers to
the preserves, the most troublesome trespassers on the park, the most
unprincipled orchard robbers, and the most disputatious asserters of
various problematical rights of way, which, according to the Town, were
public, and, according to the Hall, had been private since the Conquest.
It was true that the same path led also directly from the squire's
house, but it was not probable that the wearer of attire so equivocal
had been visiting there. All things considered, Lenny had no doubt in
his mind but that the stranger was a shop-boy or 'prentice from the town
of Thorndyke; and the notorious repute of that town, coupled with this
presumption, made it probable that Lenny now saw before him one of the
midnight desecrators of the stocks. As if to confirm the
suspicion, which passed through Lenny's mind with a rapidity wholly
disproportionate to the number of lines it costs me to convey it, the
boy, now standing right before the stocks, bent down and read that pithy
anathema with which it was defaced. And having read it, he repeated it
aloud, and Lenny actually saw him smile,--such a smile! so disagreeable
and sinister! Lenny had never before seen the smile sardonic.

But what were Lenny's pious horror and dismay when this ominous stranger
fairly seated himself on the stocks, rested his heels profanely on
the lids of two of the four round eyes, and taking out a pencil and a
pocket-book, began to write.

Was this audacious Unknown taking an inventory of the church and the
Hall for the purposes of conflagration? He looked at one and at the
other, with a