self.

Lady Lillycraft has given repeated audiences to the culprit's weeping
wife, at the Hall door; and the servant-maids have stolen out to confer
with the gipsy women under the trees. As to the little ladies of the
family, they are all outrageous at Ready-Money Jack, whom they look upon
in the light of a tyrannical giant of fairy tale. Phoebe Wilkins,
contrary to her usual nature, is the only one that is pitiless in the
affair. She thinks Mr. Tibbets quite in the right; and thinks the
gipsies deserve to be punished severely for meddling with the sheep of
the Tibbetses.

In the meantime the females of the family have evinced all the
provident kindness of the sex, ever ready to soothe and succour the
distressed, right or wrong. Lady Lillycraft has had a mattress taken to
the out-house, and comforts and delicacies of all kinds have been taken
to the prisoner; even the little girls have sent their cakes and
sweet-meats; so that, I'll warrant, the vagabond has never fared so well
in his life before. Old Christy, it is true, looks upon everything with
a wary eye; struts about with his blunderbuss with the air of a veteran
campaigner, and will hardly allow himself to be spoken to. The gipsy
women dare not come within gunshot, and every tatterdemallion of a boy
has been frightened from the park. The old fellow is determined to lodge
Starlight Tom in prison with his own hands; and hopes, he says, to see
one of the poaching crew made an example of.

I doubt, after all, whether the worthy squire is not the greatest
sufferer in the whole affair. His honourable sense of duty obliges him
to be rigid, but the overflowing kindness of his nature makes this a
grievous trial to him.

He is not accustomed to have such demands upon his justice in his truly
patriarchal domain; and it wounds his benevolent spirit, that, while
prosperity and happiness are flowing in thus bounteously upon him, he
should have to inflict misery upon a fellow-being.

He has been troubled and cast down the whole evening: took leave of the
family, on going to bed, with a sigh, instead of his usual hearty and
affectionate tone, and will, in all probability, have a far more
sleepless night than his prisoner. Indeed this unlucky affair has cast a
damp upon the whole household, as there appears to be an universal
opinion that the unlucky culprit will come to the gallows.

Morning.--The clouds of last evening are all blown over. A load has been
taken from the s