model of Frank Hazeldean. They represented to him a dazzling vision of snow-white trousers, and beautiful blue coats, and incomparable cravats. Now the dress of this stranger, though not that of a peasant nor of a farmer, did not in any way correspond with Lenny's notions of the costume of a young gentleman: it looked to him highly disreputable; the coat was covered with mud, and the hat was all manner of shapes, with a gap between the side and crown. Unknown taking an inventory of the church and the Hall for the purposes of conflagration? He looked at one, and at the other, with a strange, fixed stare as he wrote-not keeping his eyes on the paper, as Lenny had been taught to do when he sat down to his copy-book. The fact is, that Randal Leslie was tired and faint, and he felt the shock of his fall the more after the few paces he had walked, so that he was glad to rest himself a few moments; and he took that opportunity to write a line to Frank, to excuse himself for not calling again, intending to tear the leaf on which he wrote out of his pocket-book, and leave it at the first cottage he passed, with in Lenny was puzzled, till it suddenly occurred to him that the gate through which the boy had passed was in the direct path across the park from a small town, the inhabitants of which were in very bad odour at the Hall-structions to take it to the Hall. they had immemorially furnished the most daring poachers to the preserves, the most troublesome trespassers on the park, the most unprincipled orchardrobbers, and the most disputatious assertors of various problematical rights of way, which, according to the Town, were public, and, according to the Hall, had been private since the Conquest. It was true that the same path led also directly from the Squire's house, but it was not probable that the wearer of attire so equivocal had been visiting three. All things considered, Lenny had no doubt in his mind but that the stranger was a shopboy or 'prentice from the town of Thorndyke; and the notorious repute of that town, coupled with this presumption, made it probable that Lenny now saw before him one of the midnight desecrators of the Stocks. As if to confirm the suspicion, which passed through Lenny's mind with a rapidity wholly disproportionate to the number of lines it costs me to convey it, the boy, now standing right before the Stocks, bent down and read that pithy anathema with which it was defaced. And having read it, he repeated it aloud, and Lenny actually saw him smile-such a smile!-so disagreeable and sinister! Lenny had never be fore seen the smile Sardonic. While Randal was thus innocently engaged, Lenny came up to him, with the firm and measured pace of one who has resolved, cost what it may, to do his duty. And as Lenny, though brave, was not ferocious, so the anger he felt, and the suspicions he entertained, only exhibited themselves in the following solemn appeal to the offender's sense of propriety,— "Ben't you ashamed of yourself? Sitting on the Squire's new Stocks! Do get up, and go along with you!" But what were Lenny's pious horror and dismay when this ominous stranger fairly seated himself on the Stocks, rested his heels profanely on the lids of two of the four round eyes, and, taking out a pencil and a pocket-book, began to write. Was this audacious Randal turned round sharply; and though, at any other moment, he would have had sense enough to extricate himself very easily from his false position, yet, Nemo mortalium, &c. No one is always wise. And Randal was in an exceedingly bad humour. The affability towards his inferiors, for which I lately praised him, was entirely lost in the contempt for impertinent snobs natural to an insulted Etonian. Therefore, eyeing Lenny with great disdain, Randal answered briefly,"You are an insolent young blackguard." So curt a rejoinder made Lenny's blood fly to his face. Persuaded before that the intruder was some lawless apprentice or shop lad, he was now more confirmed in that judgment, not only by language so uncivil, but by the truculent glance which accompanied it, and which certainly did not derive any imposing dignity from the mutilated, rakish, hang-dog, ruinous hat, under which it shot its sullen and menacing fire. Of all the various articles of which our male attire is composed, there is perhaps not one which has so much character and expression as the top-covering. A neat, well-brushed, short-napped, gentlemanlike hat, put on with a certain air, gives a distinction and respectability to the whole exterior; whereas a broken, squashed, higgledy-piggledy sort of a hat, such as Randal Leslie had on, would go far towards transforming the stateliest gentleman that ever walked down St. James's Street into the ideal of a ruffianly scamp. Now, it is well known that there is nothing more antipathetic to your peasant-boy than a shop-boy. Even on grand political occasions, the rural working-class can rarely be coaxed into sympathy with the trading townclass. Your true English peasant is always an aristocrat. Moreover, and irrespectively of this immemorial grudge of class, there is something peculiarly hostile in the relationship between boy and boy when their backs are once up, and they are alone on a quiet bit of green. Something of the game-cock feeling-something that tends to keep alive, in the population of this island, (otherwise so lamb-like and peaceful,) the martial propensity to double the thumb tightly over the four fingers, and make what is called “a fist of it." Dangerous symptoms of these mingled and aggressive sentiments were visible in Lenny Fairfield at the words and the look of the unprepossessing stranger. And the stranger seemed aware of them; for his pale face grew more pale, and his sullen eye more fixed and more vigilant. "You get off them Stocks," said Lenny, disdaining to reply to the coarse expressions bestowed on him; and, suiting the action to the word, he gave the intruder what he meant for a shove, but which Randal took for a blow. The Etonian sprang up, and the quickness of his movement, aided but by a slight touch of his hand, made Lenny lose his balance, and sent him neck-and-crop over the Stocks. Burning with rage, the young villager rose alertly, and, flying at Randal, struck out right and left. CHAPTER III. Aid me, O ye Nine! whom the incomparable Persius satirised his contemporaries for invoking, and then, all of a sudden invoked on his own behalf-aid me to describe that famous battle by the Stocks, and in defence of the Stocks, which was waged by the two representatives of Saxon and Norman England. Here, sober support of law and duty and delegated trust-pro aris et focis; there, haughty invasion, and bellicose spirit of knighthood, and that respect for name and person, which we call honour. Here, too, hardy physical force -there, skilful discipline. Here The Nine are as deaf as a post, and as cold as a stone! Plague take the jades!—I can do better without them. Randal was a year older than Lenny, but he was not so tall nor so strong, nor even so active; and after the first blind rush, when the two boys paused, and drew back to breathe, Lenny, eyeing the slight form and hueless cheek of his opponent, and seeing blood trickling from Ran "It dal's lip, was seized with an instantaneous and generous remorse. was not fair," he thought, "to fight one whom he could beat so easily." So, retreating still farther, and letting his arms fall to his side, he said mildly-"There, let's have no more of it; but go home and be good." Randal Leslie had no remarkable degree of that constitutional quality called physical courage; but he had all those moral qualities which supply its place. He was proud-he was vindictive-he had high self-esteemhe had the destructive organ more than the combative;-what had once provoked his wrath it became his instinct to sweep away. Therefore, though all his nerves were quivering, and hot tears were in his eyes, he approached Lenny with the sternness of a gladiator, and said between his teeth, which he set hard, choking back the sob of rage and pain— "You have struck me-and you shall not stir from this ground-till I have made you repent it. Put up your hands-I will not strike you so defend yourself.” Lenny mechanically obeyed; and he had good need of the admonition: for if before he had had the advantage, now that Randal had recovered the surprise to his nerves, the battle was not to the strong. Ay, and the arm, ness of his arm. Poor Lenny, who had never fought before, was bewildered: his sensations grew so entangled that he could never recall them distinctly: he had a dim reminiscence of some breathless impotent rush-of a sudden blindness followed by quick flashes of intolerable light-of a deadly faintness, from which he was roused by sharp pangs Though Leslie had not been a fighting boy at Eton, still his temper had involved him in some conflicts when he was in the lower forms, and he had learned something of the art as well as the practice in pugilism--here-there-everywhere; and then an excellent thing, too, I am barbarous enough to believe, and which I hope will never quite die out of your public schools. Ah, many a young duke has been a better fellow for life from a fair set-to with a trader's son; and many a trader's son has learned to look a lord more manfully in the face on the hustings, from the recollection of the sound thrashing he once gave to some little Lord Leopold Dawdle. So Randal now brought his experience and art to bear; put aside those heavy roundabout blows, and darted in his own quick and sharpsupplying the due momentum of pugilistic mechanics to the natural feeble all he could remember was, that he was lying on the ground, huddled up and panting hard, while his adversary bent over him with a countenance as dark and livid as Lara himself might have bent over the fallen Otho. For Randal Leslie was not one who, by impulse and nature, subscribed to the noble English maxim-“Never hit a foe when he is down;" and it cost him a strong if brief self-struggle, not to set his heel on that prostrate form. It was the mind, not the heart, that subdued the savage within him, as, muttering something inwardly-certainly not Christian forgiveness-the victor turned gloomily away. CHAPTER IV. Just at that precise moment, who should appear but Mr. Stirn! For, in fact, being extremely anxious to get Lenny into disgrace, he had hoped that he should have found the young villager had shirked the commission intrusted to him; and the Right-hand Man had slily come back, to see if that amiable expectation were realised. He now beheld Lenny rising with some difficulty still panting hard-and with hysterical sounds akin to what is vulgarly called blubbering-his fine new waistcoat sprinkled with his own blood, which flowed from his nose nose that seemed to Lenny Fairfield's feelings to be a nose no more, but a swollen, gigantic, mountainous Slawkenbergian excrescence,-in fact, he felt all nose! Turning aghast from this spectacle, Mr. Stirn surveyed, with no more respect than Lenny had manifested, the stranger boy, who had again seated himself on the Stocks "He will sit there," answered Lenny, in broken gasps, "and he has beat me because I would not let him; but I doesn't mind that," added the villager, trying hard to suppress his tears, "and I'm ready again for him-that I am." "And what do you do, lolloping there on them blessed Stocks?" "Looking at the landscape: out of my light, man!" This tone instantly inspired Mr. Stirn with migivings: it was a tone so disrespectful to him that he was seized with involuntary respect: who but a gentleman could speak so to Mr. Stirn? "And may I ask who you be?" half said Stirn, falteringly, and "My name is Randal Leslie, and So saying Randal rose; and, moving on a few paces, turned, and throwing half a crown on the road, said to Lenny,-"Let that pay you for your bruises, and remember another time how you speak to a gentleman. As for you, fellow,"-and he pointed his scornful hand towards Mr. Stirn, who, with his mouth open and his hat now fairly off, stood bowing to the earth-"as for you, give my compli ments to Mr. Hazeldean, and say visit us at Rood Hall, I trust that the that, when he does us the honour to manners of our villagers will make him ashamed of Hazeldean." O my poor Squire! Rood Hall ashamed of Hazeldean! If that mesyou would never have looked up sage had ever been delivered to you, again! swung himself over the stile that led With those bitter words, Randal into the parson's glebe, and left Lenny Fairfield still feeling his nose, and Mr. Stirn still bowing to the earth. CHAPTER V. Randal Leslie had a very long walk home: he was bruised and sore from head to foot, and his mind was still more sore and more bruised than his body. But if Randal Leslie had rested himself in the Squire's gardens, without walking backwards, and indulging in speculations suggested by Marat, and warranted by my Lord Bacon, he would have passed a most agreeable evening, and really availed himself of the Squire's wealth by going home in the Squire's carriage. But because he chose to take so intellectual a view of property, he tumbled into a ditch; because he tumbled into a ditch, he spoiled his clothes; because he spoiled his clothes, he gave up his visit; because he gave green, and sate on the Stocks with up his visit, he got into the village a hat that gave him the air of a fugitive from the treadmill; because he sate on the Stocks-with that hat, and a cross face under it he had been forced into squabble with a clodhopper, and was a most discreditable and men ;-ergo, (this is a moral that now limping home, at war with gods will bear repetition)-ergo, when you contented to enjoy what is yours, walk in a rich man's grounds, be namely, the prospect;-I dare say you will enjoy it more than he does. CHAPTER VI. If, in the simplicity of his heart, and the crudeness of his experience, Lenny Fairfield had conceived it probable that Mr. Stirn would address to him some words in approbation of his gallantry, and in sympathy for his bruises, he soon found himself wofully mistaken. That truly great man, worthy prime-minister of Hazeldean, might, perhaps, pardon a dereliction from his orders, if such dereliction proved advantageous to the interests of the service, or redounded to the credit of the chief; but he was inexorable to that worst of diplomatic offences-an ill-timed, stupid, overzealous obedience to orders, which, if it established the devotion of the employé, got the employer into what is popularly called a scrape! though, by those unversed in the inAnd tricacies of the human heart, and unacquainted with the especial hearts of prime-ministers and Right-hand men, it might have seemed natural that Mr. Stirn, as he stood still, hat in hand, in the middle of the road, stung, humbled, and exasperated by the mortification he had received from the lips of Randal Leslie, would have felt that that young gentleman was the proper object of his resentetiquette of diplomatic life as resentment; yet such a breach of all the ment towards a superior power was the last idea that would have suggested itself to the profound intellect of the Premier of Hazledean. Still as rage like steam must escape somewhere, Mr. Stirn, on feeling-as he afterwards expressed it to his wife that his "buzzom was a burstin," turned with the natural instinct of self-preservation to the safety-valve provided for the explosion; and the vapours within him rushed into vent upon Lenny Fairfield. He clapped his hat on his head fiercely, and thus relieved his "buzzom." "You young willain! you howdacious wiper! and so all this blessed Sabbath afternoon, when you ought to have been in church on your marrow bones, a-praying for your betters, you has been a-fitting with a young gentleman, and a wisiter to your master, on the werry place of the parridge hinstitution that you was to guard and pertect; and a-bloodying it all over, I declares, with your blackguard little nose!" Thus saying, and as if to mend the matter, Mr. Stirn aimed an additional stroke at the offending member; but, Lenny mechanically putting up both his arms to defend his face, Mr. Stirn struck his knuckles against the large brass buttons that adorned the cuff of the boy's coatsleeve an incident which considerably aggravated his indignation. And Lenny, whose spirit was fairly roused at what the narrowness of his education conceived to be a signal injustice, placing the trunk of the tree between Mr. Stirn and himself, began that task of self-justification which it was equally impolitic to conceive and imprudent to execute, since, in such a case, to justify was to recriminate. "I wonder at you, Master Stirn, -if mother could hear you! You know it was you who would not let me go to church; it was you who told me to-" "Fit a young gentleman, and break the Sabbath," said Mr. Stirn, interrupting him with a withering sneer. "O yes! I told you to disgrace his honour the Squire, and me, and the parridge, and bring us all into trouble. But the Squire told me to make an example, and I will!" With those words, quick as lightning flashed upon Mr. Stirn's mind the luminous idea of setting Lenny in the very stocks which he had too faithfully guarded. Eureka! the " example" was before him! Here, he could gratify his long grudge against the pattern boy; here, by such a selection of the very best lad in the parish, he could strike terror into the worst; here he could appease the offended dignity of Randal Leslie; here was a practical apology to the Squire for the affront put upon his young visitor; here, too, there was prompt obedience to the Squire's own wish that the Stocks should be provided as soon as possible with a tenant. Suiting the action to the thought, Mr. Stirn made a rapid plunge at his victim, caught him by the skirt of his jacket, and in a few seconds more, the jaws of the Stocks had opened, and Lenny Fairfield was thrust therein-a sad spectacle of the reverses of fortune. This done, and while the boy was too astounded, too stupefied by the suddenness of the calamity for the resistance he might otherwise have made nay, for more than a few inaudible words-Mr. Stirn hurried from the spot, but not without first picking up and pocketing the half-crown designed for Lenny, and which, so great had been his first emotions, he had hitherto even almost forgotten. He then made his way towards the church, with the intention to place himself close by the door, catch the Squire as he came out, whisper to him what had passed, and lead him, with the whole congregation at his heels, to gaze upon the sacrifice offered up to the joint Powers of Nemesis and Themis. CHAPTER VII. Unaffectedly I say it upon the honour of a gentleman, and the reputation of an author, unaffectedly I say it no words of mine can do justice to the sensations experienced by Lenny Fairfield, as he sate alone in that place of penance. He felt no more the physical pain of his bruises; the anguish of his mind stifled and overbore all corporeal suffering-an |