ent, however, the tale being ended, offered
as his opinion that her fate ought to be quite clearly recognized as a
punishment. So thought the Churchwarden, and also the quiet gentleman
sitting near. The latter knew many other instances in point, one of
which could be narrated in a few words.

DAME THE NINTH--THE DUCHESS OF HAMPTONSHIRE
By the Quiet Gentleman

Some fifty years ago, the then Duke of Hamptonshire, fifth of that title,
was incontestibly the head man in his county, and particularly in the
neighbourhood of Batton. He came of the ancient and loyal family of
Saxelbye, which, before its ennoblement, had numbered many knightly and
ecclesiastical celebrities in its male line. It would have occupied a
painstaking county historian a whole afternoon to take rubbings of the
numerous effigies and heraldic devices graven to their memory on the
brasses, tablets, and altar-tombs in the aisle of the parish-church. The
Duke himself, however, was a man little attracted by ancient chronicles
in stone and metal, even when they concerned his own beginnings. He
allowed his mind to linger by preference on the many graceless and
unedifying pleasures which his position placed at his command. He could
on occasion close the mouths of his dependents by a good bomb-like oath,
and he argued doggedly with the parson on the virtues of cock-fighting
and baiting the bull.

This nobleman's personal appearance was somewhat impressive. His
complexion was that of the copper-beech tree. His frame was stalwart,
though slightly stooping. His mouth was large, and he carried an
unpolished sapling as his walking-stick, except when he carried a spud
for cutting up any thistle he encountered on his walks. His castle stood
in the midst of a park, surrounded by dusky elms, except to the
southward; and when the moon shone out, the gleaming stone facade, backed
by heavy boughs, was visible from the distant high road as a white spot
on the surface of darkness. Though called a castle, the building was
little fortified, and had been erected with greater eye to internal
convenience than those crannied places of defence to which the name
strictly appertains. It was a castellated mansion as regular as a
chessboard on its ground-plan, ornamented with make-believe bastions and
machicolations, behind which were stacks of battlemented chimneys. On
still mornings, at the fire-lighting hour, when ghostly house-maids stalk
the corridors, and th