ider by the gallon,--by the gallon daily;
cider presses are to be found at every squire's house, at every
parsonage, and every farm homestead. The trade of a brewer at
Baslehurst would seem to be as profitless as that of a breeches-maker
in the Highlands, or a shoemaker in Connaught;--but nevertheless
Bungall and Tappitt had been brewers in Baslehurst for the last fifty
years, and had managed to live out of their brewery.

It is not to be supposed that they were great men like the mighty men
of beer known of old,--such as Barclay and Perkins, or Reid and Co.
Nor were they new, and pink, and prosperous, going into Parliament
for this borough and that, just as they pleased, like the modern
heroes of the bitter cask. When the student at Oxford was asked what
man had most benefited humanity, and when he answered "Bass," I think
that he should not have been plucked. It was a fair average answer.
But no student at any university could have said as much for Bungall
and Tappitt without deserving utter disgrace, and whatever penance
an outraged examiner could inflict. It was a sour and muddy stream
that flowed from their vats; a beverage disagreeable to the palate,
and very cold and uncomfortable to the stomach. Who drank it I
could never learn. It was to be found at no respectable inn. It was
admitted at no private gentleman's table. The farmers knew nothing
of it. The labourers drenched themselves habitually with cider.
Nevertheless the brewery of Messrs. Bungall and Tappitt was kept
going, and the large ugly square brick house in which the Tappitt
family lived was warm and comfortable. There is something in the very
name of beer that makes money.

Old Bungall, he who first established the house, was still remembered
by the seniors of Baslehurst, but he had been dead more than twenty
years before the period of my story. He had been a short, fat old
man, not much above five feet high, very silent, very hard, and
very ignorant. But he had understood business, and had established
the firm on a solid foundation. Late in life he had taken into
partnership his nephew Tappitt, and during his life had been a severe
taskmaster to his partner. Indeed the firm had only assumed its
present name on the demise of Bungall. As long as he had lived it
had been Bungall's brewery. When the days of mourning were over,
then--and not till then--Mr. Tappitt had put up a board with the
joint names of the firm as at present called.

It was believe