n whether male or female, but both most inconvenient then,
with things in such a state of things. You have much to answer for,
miss, about it; but how was you to help it, though?

"The tool-shed door was too narrow to let the hurdle and the body in,
and finding some large sea-kale pots standing out of use against the
door, the two men (who were tired with the weight and fright, I dare
say) set down their burden upon these, under a row of hollyhocks, at the
end of the row of bee-hives. And here they wiped their foreheads with
some rags they had for handkerchiefs, or one of them with his own
sleeve, I should say, and, gaining their breath, they began to talk with
the boldness of the sunrise over them. But Mr. Rural Polishman, as
he was called in those parts, was walking up and down on guard, and
despising of their foolish words.

"My master, the Captain, your father, miss, came out of a window and
down the cross-walk, while I was at the green door peeping, for I
thought that I might be wanted, if only to take orders what was to be
done inside. The constable stiffly touched his hat, and marched to the
head of the hurdle, and said,

"'Do you know this gentleman?'

"Your father took no more notice of him than if he had been a stiff
hollyhock, which he might have resembled if he had been good-looking.
The Captain thought highly of discipline always, and no kinder gentleman
could there be to those who gave his dues to him. But that man's voice
had a low and dirty impertinent sort of a twang with it. Nothing could
have been more unlucky. Every thing depended on that fellow in an
ignorant neighborhood like that; and his lordship, for such he was now,
of course, would not even deign to answer him. He stood over his head in
his upright way by a good foot, and ordered him here and there, as the
fellow had been expecting, I do believe, to order his lordship. And that
made the bitterest enemy of him, being newly sent into these parts,
and puffed up with authority. And the two miller's men could not help
grinning, for he had waved them about like a pair of dogs.

"But to suppose that my master 'was unmoved, and took it brutally' (as
that wretch of a fellow swore afterward), only shows what a stuck-up
dolt he was. For when my master had examined his father, and made his
poor body be brought in and spread on the couch in the dining-room, and
sent me hot-foot for old Dr. Diggory down at the bottom of Shoxford,
Susan peeped in throug