ne, you will keep from the brandy. I have remitted the rents to Lord
Cumber, who will soon make them fly."

In a few minutes afterwards he proceeded at full speed to the edifying
death-bed of his father.

Whilst Phil is preparing the supplementary affidavits for Easel's
arrest, which he stretched out considerably by interpolations drawn from
his own imagination, we shall follow Darby to M'Slime's, observing,
_en passant_, that the aforesaid Darby, as he went, might have been
perceived to grin and chuckle, and sometimes give a short, low, abrupt
cackle, of a nature peculiarly gratifying to himself.

"Devil a _smite_ ever either of them left on any bone thrown me," he
exclaimed. "Instead o' that they begridged me the very fees that I was
entitled to, bad luck to them! Well no matther!" and here he shrugged and
chuckled again, and so continued to do as he went along.

As for Solomon, he felt full occasion that morning for all his
privileges and spiritual sustainment. A few days previous, he had been
brought before his brother Elders by Susanna's father, whose statement
was unfortunately too plain to admit of any doubt or misapprehension on
the subject. These respectable men--for with but another exception they
were so--discharged their duty as became them. The process of expulsion
was gone into, but rather with a spirit of sorrow for the failings of
an erring and sinful fellow-creature, than with any of the dogmatic and
fiery indignation, which, under the plea of charity for his soul, is too
often poured upon the head of a backslider. The fact now was that the
consequences of his crime were about to come home to him, in a manner
which required the exhibition of all the moral courage he possessed. It
is unnecessary to inform our readers, that he had assumed the cloak of
hypocrisy for the purpose of merely advancing his own interests among
a certain section of the religious world. No sooner, however, did the
history of his expulsion and its cause become general, than all those
religious clients, who felt themselves scandalized by his conduct,
immediately withdrew their business out of his hands, and transferred
it to those of others; and not only persons of a decidedly religious
character, but also almost every one who detested hypocrisy, and loved
to see it exposed and punished. In truth, short as the period was since
that exposure, Solomon was both surprised and mortified at the number of
clients and friends who deserte