* * * * *

The Colonel was the first to comment upon the Churchwarden's tale, by
saying that the fate of the poor fellow was rather a hard one.

The gentleman-tradesman could not see that his fate was at all too hard
for him. He was legally nothing to her, and he had served her
shamefully. If he had been really her husband it would have stood
differently.

The Bookworm remarked that Lord Icenway seemed to have been a very
unsuspicious man, with which view a fat member with a crimson face
agreed. It was true his wife was a very close-mouthed personage, which
made a difference. If she had spoken out recklessly her lord might have
been suspicious enough, as in the case of that lady who lived at
Stapleford Park in their great-grandfathers' time. Though there, to be
sure, considerations arose which made her husband view matters with much
philosophy.

A few of the members doubted the possibility of this.

The crimson man, who was a retired maltster of comfortable means,
_ventru_, and short in stature, cleared his throat, blew off his
superfluous breath, and proceeded to give the instance before alluded to
of such possibility, first apologizing for his heroine's lack of a title,
it never having been his good fortune to know many of the nobility. To
his style of narrative the following is only an approximation.

DAME THE SIXTH--SQUIRE PETRICK'S LADY
By the Crimson Maltster

Folk who are at all acquainted with the traditions of Stapleford Park
will not need to be told that in the middle of the last century it was
owned by that trump of mortgagees, Timothy Petrick, whose skill in
gaining possession of fair estates by granting sums of money on their
title-deeds has seldom if ever been equalled in our part of England.
Timothy was a lawyer by profession, and agent to several noblemen, by
which means his special line of business became opened to him by a sort
of revelation. It is said that a relative of his, a very deep thinker,
who afterwards had the misfortune to be transported for life for mistaken
notions on the signing of a will, taught him considerable legal lore,
which he creditably resolved never to throw away for the benefit of other
people, but to reserve it entirely for his own.

However, I have nothing in particular to say about his early and active
days, but rather of the time when, an old man, he had become the owner of
vast estates by the means I have signified--among them the great manor of
S