'am!--no"--(very shortly)--"no man alive shall beat me, I
promise you, ma'am."

"That is according as you happen to merit, sir," said I: "for your mode
of speaking to this young lady is so unbecoming, that, if you do not
change your tone, I shall think it worth while to chastise you myself."

"Chastise, sir? and--me, sir?--Do you know whom you speak to, sir?"

"Yes, sir," I replied; "you say yourself you are clerk of peace to the
county; and Gaffer Rutledge says you are a pettifogger; and in neither
capacity are you entitled to be impertinent to a young lady of fashion."

Miss Vernon laid her hand on my arm, and exclaimed, "Come, Mr.
Osbaldistone, I will have no assaults and battery on Mr. Jobson; I am
not in sufficient charity with him to permit a single touch of your
whip--why, he would live on it for a term at least. Besides, you have
already hurt his feelings sufficiently--you have called him
impertinent."

"I don't value his language, Miss," said the clerk, somewhat crestfallen:
"besides, impertinent is not an actionable word; but pettifogger is
slander in the highest degree, and that I will make Gaffer Rutledge know
to his cost, and all who maliciously repeat the same, to the breach of
the public peace, and the taking away of my private good name."

"Never mind that, Mr. Jobson," said Miss Vernon; "you know, where there
is nothing, your own law allows that the king himself must lose his
rights; and for the taking away of your good name, I pity the poor fellow
who gets it, and wish you joy of losing it with all my heart."

"Very well, ma'am--good evening, ma'am--I have no more to say--only there
are laws against papists, which it would be well for the land were they
better executed. There's third and fourth Edward VI., of antiphoners,
missals, grailes, professionals, manuals, legends, pies, portuasses, and
those that have such trinkets in their possession, Miss Vernon--and
there's summoning of papists to take the oaths--and there are popish
recusant convicts under the first of his present Majesty--ay, and there
are penalties for hearing mass--See twenty-third of Queen Elizabeth, and
third James First, chapter twenty-fifth. And there are estates to be
registered, and deeds and wills to be enrolled, and double taxes to be
made, according to the acts in that case made and provided"--

"See the new edition of the Statutes at Large, published under the
careful revision of Joseph Jobson, Gent., Clerk of the Peace,