afraid. He
can't take his degree."

I got up to go away. I felt that the object of my mission was
unattained.

"Don't go, my dear sir; don't go. 'Pon my word I did not mean any thing
in what I said. He may be very clever, and very admirable in every
respect, though he does not take his degree. By the by, did you see
Brougham's speech on the poor-law? He should be called the poor-lawyer
_par excellence_, as the French say. You'll call on me soon again, I
hope. By the by, are you fond of tulips? I have a beautiful bed just in
bloom."

O Poggs!--O Juffles!--O nameless governess! which of you all was Lucy
Ashton?--I waited all that day in the Wilderness, but nobody came. The
long shadows began to point eastward; the pigs were all driven in; the
world was left to silence and to me; and I walked slowly and
disconsolately home.

On getting inside the great door of the court-yard, I heard
voices--loud, angry voices. I recognized my father's tones, and was
about to go round by the inner wall, when, hurrying rapidly towards me,
I saw three persons--my father was one of them. The elder of the others
was a man about sixty years of age--brown, almost black in the
complexion, with nankin trousers a world too large for his long legs; an
immense broad-brimmed straw-hat on his head, and a large gold-headed
cane in his hand. The other was a little sharp-eyed, thin-featured man,
about my own age, but with the appearance of twenty times the shrewdness
I could ever muster--one of the prematurely sagacious youths who seem as
if they had been born attorneys, and are on the look-out for sharp
practice.

"I have already told you, sir, that your intrusion is insulting," said
my father: "relieve me of your presence."

"Jist as you like, that's matter of course," said the old man; "but the
time will come when you'll repent this here unpoliteness. I never see
sich a thing from a real gentleman to another in all my born days."

"It's because he ain't master of the philosophy of good manners,"
squeaked the younger.

"Why, what in hearth," continued the senior, "is there to be angry
about? I want to buy your land--it ain't any sich enormous property ater
all--and offer you about three times the vallyation of a respectable
surveyor; what's that to set up your back about? Come now, there's a
good gentleman, think better over it. The money is all ready at the
bank."

"Do you wish to drive me to violent measures--to throw you into the
river?