the Baronet's courage; yet two days were
spent in fruitless conferences before he could attain the desired point.
He found Sir Bingo on these different occasions in all sorts of
different moods of mind, and disposed to view the thing in all shades of
light, except what the Captain thought was the true one.--He was in a
drunken humour--in a sullen humour--in a thoughtless and vilipending
humour--in every humour but a fighting one. And when Captain MacTurk
talked of the reputation of the company at the Well, Sir Bingo pretended
to take offence, said the company might go to the devil, and hinted that
he "did them sufficient honour by gracing them with his countenance, but
did not mean to constitute them any judges of his affairs. The fellow
was a raff, and he would have nothing to do with him."

Captain MacTurk would willingly have taken measures against the Baronet
himself, as in a state of contumacy, but was opposed by Winterblossom
and other members of the committee, who considered Sir Bingo as too
important and illustrious a member of their society to be rashly
expelled from a place not honoured by the residence of many persons of
rank; and finally insisted that nothing should be done in the matter
without the advice of Mowbray, whose preparations for his solemn
festival on the following Thursday had so much occupied him, that he had
not lately appeared at the Well.

In the meanwhile, the gallant Captain seemed to experience as much
distress of mind, as if some stain had lain on his own most unblemished
of reputations. He went up and down upon the points of his toes, rising
up on his instep with a jerk which at once expressed vexation and
defiance--He carried his nose turned up in the air, like that of a pig
when he snuffs the approaching storm--He spoke in monosyllables when he
spoke at all; and--what perhaps illustrated in the strongest manner the
depth of his feelings--he refused, in face of the whole company, to
pledge Sir Bingo in a glass of the Baronet's peculiar cogniac.

At length, the whole Well was alarmed by the report brought by a smart
outrider, that the young Earl of Etherington, reported to be rising on
the horizon of fashion as a star of the first magnitude, intended to
pass an hour, or a day, or a week, as it might happen, (for his lordship
could not be supposed to know his own mind,) at St. Ronan's Well.

This suddenly put all in motion. Almanacks were opened to ascertain his
lordship's age, enquir