tion of your wretched travesties. The third line, Mrs Hill, is
really:--

But an arrow from a cross-bow, sirs, the fiercest pride can quell.

There is nothing so vulgar as hitting in the verse, and your ear for
poetry must tell you that _middle_ cannot rhyme with _fell_, even if it
were not a piece of the most Gothic barbarity. Thus a fine English song,
such as I love to hear, is murdered."

"My opinion," said the host, "my opinion is that you could'nt quell a
man's pride better than by hitting him fair in the middle. It might be
against the laws of war, but it would double him up, and take all the
consayt out of him sudden. I mind when Rufus was out seeing his sisters,
there was a parson got him to play cricket, and aggravated the boy by
bowling him out, and catching his ball, and sneering at him for a good
misser and a butter-fingers; so, when he went to the bat again, he
looked carefully at the ball and got it on the tip of his bat, and, the
next thing he knowed, the parson was doubled up like a jack knife. He
had been hit fair in the middle, where the bad boy meant to do it. There
was no sarvice next Sunday, no, nor for two weeks."

"That was very wrong of Rufus," said the old lady with a sigh, "however,
he did offer to remunerate Mr. Perrowne for his medical expenses, but
the gentleman refused to accept any equivalent, and said it was the
fortune of war, which made Rufus feel humiliated and sorry."

Night had fallen, and the coal oil lamp was lit. The old lady deposited
a large Bible on the table, to which her husband drew in a chair, after
asking each of his guests unsuccessfully to conduct family worship. He
read with emphasis and feeling the 91st Psalm, and thereafter, falling
on his knees, offered a short but comprehensive prayer, in which the
absent children were included, and the two wayfarers were not forgotten.
While the good wife went out to the dairy to see that the milk was
covered up from an invisible cat, the men undressed, and the pedestrians
turned into a double bed, the property of the missing Rufus. The head of
the household also turned in upon his couch, and coughed, the latter
being a signal to his wife. She came in, blew out the lamp, and retired
in the darkness. Then four voices said "good-night"; and rest succeeded
the labours of the day. "No nightmares or fits to-night, Corry, an' you
love me," whispered the dominie; but the lawyer was asleep soon after
his head touched the pillow. T