otion.

But on Justice Foxley, on whom my eloquence was particularly designed to
make impression, the result was much less favourable. He consulted in a
whisper with Mr. Nicholas, his clerk--pshawed, hemmed, and elevated
his eyebrows, as if in scorn of my supplication. At length, having
apparently made up his mind, he leaned back in his chair, and smoked
his pipe with great energy, with a look of defiance, designed to make me
aware that all my reasoning was lost on him.

At length, when I stopped, more from lack of breath than want of
argument, he opened his oracular jaws, and made the following reply,
interrupted by his usual interjectional ejaculations, and by long
volumes of smoke:--'Hem--aye--eh--poof. And, youngster, do you think
Matthew Foxley, who has been one of the quorum for these twenty years,
is to be come over with such trash as would hardly cheat an apple-woman?
Poof--poof--eh! Why, man--eh--dost thou not know the charge is not a
bailable matter--and that--hum--aye--the greatest man--poof--the Baron
of Graystock himself, must stand committed? and yet you pretend to have
been kidnapped by this gentleman, and robbed of property, and what not;
and--eh--poof--you would persuade me all you want is to get away from
him? I do believe--eh--that it IS all you want. Therefore, as you are
a sort of a slip-string gentleman, and--aye--hum--a kind of idle
apprentice, and something cock-brained withal, as the honest folks
of the house tell me--why, you must e'en remain under custody of your
guardian, till your coming of age, or my Lord Chancellor's warrant,
shall give you the management of your own affairs, which, if you can
gather your brains again, you will even then not be--aye--hem--poof--in
particular haste to assume.'

The time occupied by his worship's hums, and haws, and puffs of tobacco
smoke, together with the slow and pompous manner in which he spoke, gave
me a minute's space to collect my ideas, dispersed as they were by the
extraordinary purport of this annunciation.

'I cannot conceive, sir,' I replied, 'by what singular tenure this
person claims my obedience as a guardian; it is a barefaced imposture. I
never in my life saw him, until I came unhappily to this country, about
four weeks since.'

'Aye, sir--we--eh--know, and are aware--that--poof--you do not like
to hear some folk's names; and that--eh--you understand me--there are
things, and sounds, and matters, conversation about names, and suchlike,