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TOBY LACKPENNY THE PHILOSOPHICAL:
A DEVOTEE OF THE MARVELLOUS.
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AMONG the most remarkable events which took place in Haxey, towards the close of the last century, was the settlement, in that ancient village, of curious Toby Lackpenny, the philosophical tailor.  Toby's coat was usually out at the elbows; but he had long held, throughout the whole Isle of Axholme, a high reputation as a man of deep and singular learning.  His "library" was the theme of marvel unceasing to his plain and unsophisticated customers; and, though it consisted but of forty or fifty ragged volumes, it constituted a wealth that the philosophical Toby, himself, priced above rubies.  To this treasury of wisdom he nightly resorted; with ever-fresh delight, as regularly as his manual labour closed; and many an ecstatic hour did he live over his books in the sweet stillness and solitude of early morning.  There were tractates on the whole circle of science, in his bibliographical collection, Toby asserted—for, like all other great philosophers, he aspired to be an encyclopædist in knowledge; but, up to the time at which we are commencing this brief record of Toby's history, it was simply, by his mastery of the erudite pages of Nicholas Culpepper,—and of a very ancient volume comprising treatises on Astrology, Geomancy, Palmistry, and other kindred occult studies,—that Toby had won for himself, throughout the length and breadth of Axholmian land, so high a character for wisdom.  None could doubt the profundity of Toby's acquirements; for whoever took a wild flower to his door was sure to be told its name,—its healing virtues,—and the names of its presiding influences, the planets and zodiacal constellations,—those celestial potencies from which, he assured the visitor, every herb and flower derived their medicinal virtues.  And, oh! the decoctions, and the salves, and the ointments, and the plaisters, and the poultices, and the liniments, and the electuaries, and the simples, and the compounds, that were made by the old women of Haxey, and all Axholme, by Toby Lackpenny's oracular direction!  And then the exultant looks and honeyed words with which some would return thanks to Toby, and assure him all their tooth-ache, or head, ache, or elbow-ache, had vanished, like magic, by their diligent attention to his prescription; and then the reach and shrewdness he displayed in answering such as complained that his advice had not been of the service they had apprehended, namely, that they had not plucked the flower in the hour when its own planet presided,—or they had not boiled it before the Moon rose,—and she was in opposition to Jupiter, the lord of the plant wormwood,—or some other convincing reason why the device had not succeeded.

    Toby's advancement in the "astral science" also brought him an increasing number of customers,—though the naked condition of his elbows told the fact that this growing knowledge was somewhat profitless in a substantial sense.  Nevertheless, every successive day strengthened his confidence that he would soon be "even with Booker, or Lilly, or Gadbury, or any of 'em that his grandfather used to talk about;"—for he had also been eager, in his day, to be able to prognosticate future events by tracing "the stars in their courses."  And, now, as surely as the evening returned, Toby might be seen at his own door, seated on a low stool, drawing astrological diagrams on a fragment of slate, and placing the symbols of the planets and signs of the zodiac in due position in the "table of houses."

    The vagueness which Toby found to be so characteristic of what astrologers call the "rules of judgment" often brought the zealous student to a pause, as to the real utility of his pursuit; but the extreme credulousness of his constitution usually urged him to put an end to the dubious reasonings that often rose within him.  Now and then, a sharp stroke from the village parson,—levelled, in full canonicals, from the pulpit of a Sunday forenoon,—with the marksman's stern eye fixed, meanwhile, on poor Toby,—made him stagger a little.  "It was a guilty act,"—the clergyman asserted,—"to rend away the natural veil which the Creator had drawn over man's discernment of futurity: it was a controversion of the order of His Providence: it was an attempt to seize upon the Almighty's own attributes, and wield a power that belonged solely to Himself."  Such eloquent sentences bothered Toby still more, when the well-intentioned shepherd rounded them by exclaiming, as he beat the

that "star-gazers, and wizards, and enchanters, were, each and all, an abomination to the Lord!"

    But, alas! for poor Toby,—when his favourite disciple Joe,—after being torn from him by Dame Deborah's commandment in obedience to Toby's great foe, the vicar,—alas! for Toby, when Joe, filled with zeal to discharge his conscience, re-entered the tailor's cottage one evening at dusk, and attacked his old teacher in the very heart and centre of his predilections, declaring there would be no salvation for him in this world, till he had followed the example of the Ephesian Christians, and burnt his cabalistical books; nor any happiness for him in the prospect of a future life, until he had eschewed all his delusive vanities, and cried at the footstool of his Maker for the pardon of his sins!  Never was the might with which a mind sinewed by some strong enthusiasm controls even an elder and more experienced intellect more signally evinced than in the contest between the orphan Joe, under his religious frenzy, and his old teacher, the soothsaying tailor.  In the outset of this strange opposition and aggression on the part of his late scholar, Toby Lackpenny stoutly parried the blows of his unexpected adversary by returning text for text, and argument for argument.

    "Is it not plainly declared in the Book of judges, that 'the stars in their courses fought against Sisera'?" asked Toby, with all the emphasis which his zeal for the hereditary honour and power of the stars prompted; "can anything prove more clearly that they sway human affairs?  And the inspired Psalmist saith of the heavenly bodies, that 'Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.'  Which word line, according to Aben Ezra, and the most skilful cabalists," continued Toby, diving into the profoundest depths of his learning for the defence of his beloved theories, "ought to be rendered rule or direction, and evidently sets forth the fact that the planets exercise lordship in their respective houses,—while the latter part of the passage makes known the precious truth that the wise and skilful student will learn to understand their language."

    "But you have studied their language a long time without understanding it a whit the surer,—you know you have,—for you have told me so more than once, neighbour Toby," replied Joe, with honest and unshrinking fervour; "and as your head is fast becoming grey, and as flowers are often nipped though but in the bud,—I think it would be wiser, in you as an aged man, and in me as a frail youth, to get prepared for death; therefore, I conjure you, Toby, as you value your own soul, to forsake these vanities!"

    This simple and sincere language, from one who was then little more than a child in years, shook the old man's heart more than all the clergyman's hortatory thunderbolts had shaken his reason.  Toby attempted to renew his sophistries, at Joe's succeeding visits; but felt, at length, thoroughly subdued under the heartfelt and persevering enthusiasm of a mere boy.

    "Verily!" Toby Lackpenny often exclaimed, in after-times, when relating the progress of his conversion,—"although my will was stubborn, I often trembled before the spirit of that child, like Felix before Paul, or like the jailor in the prison at Philippi!"

    The astrologer burnt his books of the astral science, and all the other occult, and therefore satanical sciences; and he and Joe were thenceforth united in a novel and more elevated pursuit,—the acquirement of a purified and spiritual nature.  But the distinctness of minds, and the force of habit in different natures, were strikingly discoverable in the relative degrees of zeal with which the youth and Toby followed their new object.  Joe's ascetic fervour has been described.  But Toby's bent was of a diverse character: he found it impossible to enter with Joe's vehemence into the quest of an entire renewal of heart,—and could not resist the tendency to seek for enlightenment among the curious treasures of his little library.  With indescribable rapture Toby found, as he thought, exactly what he wanted, in the abstruse pages of Jacob Bœhmen.  He had long kept the volumes of the mystical German on his shelves; but he assured himself that he never saw the true meaning of the high mysteries developed in the "Forty Questions" with so clear a vision as he did now the films of the "old Adam" were beginning to fall from his eyes.

    It need scarcely be observed that Joe heard Toby's announcement of these abstract discoveries with cold indifference.  Neither when the lad's fervour had abated, and disgust and melancholy succeeded, did he feel able to receive the tailor's assurances of the superior consolation to be derived from these puzzling studies.  Toby's exhilaration of spirits, happily for himself, suffered little interruption after the full growth of his devoted attachment to the cloudy exercitations of the old Quietist,—"Of a truth," he would often say to his customers, "I can never be sufficiently thankful that a merciful Providence shewed me the spiritual lantern of Jacob Bœhmen, wherewith I might find, and possess, the pearl of great price!"

    Within two years of the expiry of Joe's apprenticeship, however, the devotional and marvel-loving tailor had transferred his worship from the shrine of the mystical German shoemaker to the more lofty, as well as more celestial, image of Baron Emanuel Swedenborg.  The Scripture histories had, thenceforth, an allegorical sense for Toby, as well as for Joe; and the lad could scarcely hint that he thought the transactions in the garden of Eden were to be read as figure, before the learned Lackpenny was ready to pour out a profound descant on the proprium, or "sensual principle," which he affirmed to be typified by the serpent in the garden;—and declared his conviction, that the Mosaic account of the first human pair was, in reality, a mere symbolical history of "the First Church," and of the causes of its forfeiture of purity.

    At another argumentative season, when the apprentice had ventured to ask if Toby did not think there was something incongruous in the account of Noah's flood, and in the size the ark was said to be,—and how the beasts went in,—and how they were supported,—the penetrating Swedenborgian assured the inquirer, with the utmost gravity, that he thought there was nothing in the whole world more easy of explication.

    "Know thou, my beloved Joey," said the sincere old man; raising his spectacles, and placing them, like two additional eyes, in the centre of his large forehead, "that whoever giveth his hearty faith to the teaching of the celestial-minded Swedenborg will receive a second eye-sight,—spiritual, and far more precious than the eyes of this earthly body.  The Deluge, Joey, represents the 'Second Church,' as the garden of Paradise represents the First.  The ark is the man of the Church; and the forty days' rain is a figure for the temptations of the senses, by which the Second Church, as well as the First, was tried: you may see that figure plainly cleared up by our Saviour's temptation in the wilderness.  The ark is also described as having a window above,—that signifies the intellectual principle; and a door, moreover, at the side,—that denotes the faculty of hearing."

    "I wish all these things had been described in a plainer way, if they mean all this," interjected the youth, impatient of his mystic friend's harangue.

    "If!" exclaimed Toby, astonished out of measure that any sane person could, for one moment, doubt what seemed to himself to be so pellucidly clear;—"if!—why, only read it for yourself, Joe, in the 'Celestial Arcana' of the inspired Emanuel of the North!"—and, therewith, the agile old philosopher sprang from his chair, and reached the volume from his shelves.

    "Never mind, friend Toby; not at present;" said Joe, very quietly.

    "Well, well," said Toby, "another time then;—but you won't hear me out, or otherwise I could clearly prove what I had begun to say."

    "But what confidence can one place in these dreams of your favourite Emanuel?" said Joe.

    "Dreams!" retorted the mystic tailor, lowering his voice, and changing the expression of his countenance, until Joe wondered what was the matter with him,—"Dreams! no, no, he didn't dream, Joey.  He was favoured with heavenly visions!  The angels actually took him several times to heaven,—for he says so himself—"

    "And Mahomet said the same," interjected Joe.

    "Interrupt me not!" continued Toby, looking still more awfully mysterious:—"I tell thee, the angels took him to heaven, and unfolded to him hidden mysteries!  And I tell thee, Joey, that I believe it is possible to attain unto such a pure state here, in this world, that we may converse with angels.  I have fasted every day this week till sunset," concluded the poor honest enthusiast, creeping close to Joe, and speaking almost in his ear,—"and I have faith to believe that, in a little time, after much prayer, I,—even I,—shall be permitted to see the angelic world,—yea, and to converse with it!"

    One of Joe's fellow-apprentices here lifted up the latch, and informed him that Dame Deborah wished he would come home, for the hour was getting late. Pressing his old friend's hand, without looking him in the face, the youth wished him "Good-night! " not a little relieved by the summons of his mistress.

    On the morrow, the neighbourhood was thrown into a state of alarm by a cottager having found poor Toby Lackpenny in a swoon upon his shop-board.  Finding the experiment attended with such imminent hazard, the fervent enthusiast was persuaded the next night, by Joe, after two hours' indefatigable argumentation, to lay aside his attempt, by devout abstinence, at "purging the frame terrestrial till it could witness the vision celestial."

    The occurrence of a very singular incident, however, and some effects that followed it, produced many a misgiving in poor Toby's mind that he had done wickedly in giving up the pursuit of this spiritual and exalted object.  It was about the third night after Toby had yielded to Joe's prudent counsel,—and while they were sitting in quiet converse on one of their old themes,—that Toby's cottage door was suddenly burst open by a blow which resembled the stroke of a thunderbolt in the imagination of Joe and his ancient gossip,—and, on the centre of the floor, as suddenly stood Frank Friskit, Joe's younger fellow-apprentice, and the most mischievous scapegrace in the village.  The face of the unexpected visitant was like the whitened wall; and his curly locks, as if in consternation at the unwonted pallor of his countenance, stood, "nine ways of a Wednesday," as Toby phrased it.  His trembling knees and torn dress made confession,—the trembler himself being tongueless with dread,—that Frank had been engaged in some fearful adventure.  Joe hastened to support him,—for the lad swooned almost instantly.  Toby hastened for cold water to aid his recovery; and, in a few seconds, Noah Wallhead, Joe's other fellow-apprentice, also entered Toby's cottage, and manifested considerable solicitude about Frank's alarming condition.  After a plentiful libation upon his temples, Frank began to come to his senses.

    "What's the matter, Franky?" said Toby, gently, as soon as he thought the convalescent was able to bear the inquiry.

    "I've—I've seen some'at!" replied Frank, hysterically.

    "Seen!—well, but what have you seen, Frank?" asked Joe.

    "A bar-ghost, Joe, or else th' old lad!" answered Friskit, with a chattering of the teeth.

    Noah Wallhead laughed; but Toby and Joe, seeing the young ghost-seer was now able to sit up without help, requested him, when they had closed the door, to tell his story at length, and conceal nothing.

    The repentant Frank avowed himself to be the guilty perpetrator of a series of malicious attempts upon the natural liberty of Toby Lackpenny's cat!  Every urchin in the village of Haxey had been blamed, at one time or other, for the base machination of setting "snickles," or nooses of wire, in the tailor's little garden.  The sage Toby profoundly conjectured, and openly maintained, all along, that these wicked devices were intended to ensnare his favourite tabby; but neither he, nor any one else, had ever suspected Frank Friskit to be the foul conspirator, inasmuch as he was so frequently in Toby's cot, and on friendly terms with him.  Under the agitation of affright, the conscience-stricken and self-discovered culprit solemnly vowed that he would forsake the way of transgression thenceforth; for he had seen such a sight, while setting a snickle, as he could never forget as long as he lived!  How he had got over the hedge he could not tell:—he believed his wits left him as soon as he saw the bar-ghost,—for he could remember nothing besides that queer sight!

    "But what was it like, Frank?" asked Joe.

    "Like!—why, it had a dark-looking face, and a pair of eyes as big as owls' heads!" replied the lad, with a shudder.

    "And how big was it?" asked Joe, again.

    "I only saw the great foul face grinning and staring at me, and all on a blaze,—and then it was gone!" said Frank.

    Joe received the last answer with a smile,—but, on turning round, when Noah Wallhead touched his elbow, he could not forbear laughter.  Noah shewed Joe the hollow turnip,—with its eyes and mouth, that had so marvellously affrighted the younger apprentice when lit up with a bit of candle,—a common trick among rustic youngsters.  Toby, however, was not let into the secret, and took it very ill that Joe, especially, should laugh at what he considered a very alarming narrative.  Feeling it incumbent on himself to use this advantageous opportunity for enforcing a homily on reform, he thus addressed himself to the penitent Frank Friskit:—

    "Be thankful, foolish boy," he said, "that this evil spirit has done thee no real harm; and, for the future, lay aside thy wicked follies.  And, above all, Frank, bethink thee that thou has' been guilty of a great sin to be so long pretending good neighbourship with me, and yet to be all the while plotting how to snickle my poor dumb creatur'.  No wonder the bar-ghost should visit thee!  Say thy Belief, as well as thy prayers, to-night, Frank,—and be a good lad in futur', and then thou may' hope that the Lord will forgive this deceit, for that's a greater sin than mischief!"—and then, fearing to renew the lad's terrors,—since he already began to tremble afresh,—Toby besought Joe and Noah Wallhead to take him home.

    Toby Lackpenny felt "indescribably queer," as he afterwards said,—when left alone that night.  He tried to banish the remembrance of Frank's strange description of the trunkless head,—but he found that to be impossible, as long as he sat by the fire,—for every flicker of the flames startled him with a new fear or fancy.  So he betook himself to bed.  But alas! poor Tobys frame had been so completely weakened by fasting, and his indulgence of the marvelling propensity of his constitution had rendered his understanding and will so powerless, that he felt like a being that has no longer any self-government.  The head,—the queer head that Frank had seen,—with its fiery eyes and mouth,—was all Toby could think about, as he lay tossing to and fro in bed:—"What a marvellous sight it must have been!" said Toby to himself,—"'a grinning dark face, with eyes as big as owls' heads,'—the boy said; 'all on a blaze in a moment, and then gone!'"  And the revolting picture, at length, burst in reality,—he believed,—before his eyes!  Nor had he the power to banish the uncouth and distorted phantasin,—although he gathered up all his courage and tried to laugh, once:—it was in vain,—the sound of his own forced laughter caused his skin to creep!  Then Toby shut his eyes, and turned himself on his pillow, and bravely resolved he would sleep,—but it still was in vain:—when his eyelids ached with the compressure he had exerted upon them, he opened his eyes once more,—and lo! there was a real, grinning, goggle-eyed head,—all on fire,—coming towards him, from an immense distance!  The trunkless head was a mile off, apparently;—but it was coming,—and what was he to do?  It came on rapidly,—and the heart of poor Toby beat loudly against his ribs, and the perspiration started from his brow; and, at length, when the glaring phantom of a head was approaching very near, he made a convulsive effort and dashed his head beneath the bed-clothes! Half-suffocated with heat and fear, he threw the clothes sufficiently off to obtain a breath or two, when, to his unspeakable relief, his incomprehensible tantalizer vanished.

    In a few minutes, however, the horrible spectre of a head appeared again, in the immense, immeasurable distance.  It approached at the same rapid and threatening rate as before, and with features he thought still more frightful; and, again, he had recourse to the bed-clothes for protection from this terrific visitant.  When the head commenced its menacing approach for the third time Toby's horror exceeded endurance, and he jumped from his low bed, and threw open his little window to catch the cool air.  The night breeze speedily dispelled his giddiness, and effectually banished the disturbing figure from his disordered sensory.

    Toby stood a few moments attempting to rally his mind, by his old employment of counting the stars in each of the more striking constellations, which were at the time distinctly and brightly visible; but the hour of midnight, told by the solemn tones of the church-clock, warned him to close the window, and endeavour to find the rest he felt he now so much needed.  Exhaustion, happily, came to his relief, and Toby forgot the fiery head without a trunk, in more gentle dreams.

    Joe heard Toby's relation of this singular visit, the next night, with a degree of phlegm and coolness that amazed the marvel-stricken tailor.  Nor could Toby receive for gospel any of the natural explanations of his young friend: it was in vain that Joe recounted what he had lately read of Nicolai, the printer of Berlin, and his wondrous diseased visions,—it was equally in vain that the youth strove to shew Toby that the very manner of the strange head's visit—so like what was called "phantasmagoria" and other optical delusions—proved, to a dead certainty, that it all arose from over-excitement of the brain.  Toby poohed and pshawed at everything Joe said,—and was nearer than Joe had ever thought him towards calling his former disciple by some offensive name.  The lad was compelled to desist from his attempt to reason Toby out of his uneasy conviction, that he had actually been visited by some evil agent as a punishment for his infraction of the vow he took never to eat food till sunset,—that so he might attain to communion with heavenly angels!

    Left to himself, the stricken idealist fell into still more pernicious errors.  Witchcraft was the next delusion he was fated to experience.  Not that Toby ever imagined himself to be either a witch or a wizard; but he fell, most obstinately into the belief,—ay, as obstinately as the knight of La Mancha himself,—that he was under the mischievous power of some who dealt with wicked spirits and practised enchantments.  His imagination in this, as in earlier instances of its treacherousness to his judgment, made a rapid, though gradual, abandonment of all self-evident and common-sense conclusions, even in the every-day affairs of life.  That nest of temptation—his library—as, also, in the case of the world-known Quixote, was, again, the source from which Toby Lackpenny drew the written proofs for the reality of his credulous vagaries.  " Gloomy Glanvil," as critical Toby had called him in the days of his higher spiritual-mindedness, was the superstitious expounder of doctrine to whom the philosophical tailor now attached himself.  How could he deny that a compact with evil spirits was possible to fallen human creatures, when he had believed, so heartily, with Swedenborg, that it was possible for sinful man to hold communion with celestial ministers?  Besides, was there not the indubitable history of the Witch of Endor, and innumerable other references to dealers with familiar spirits, in the volume of Holy Writ?  And were they likely—these wicked and envious agencies of the "evil eye"—to look on any human being so maliciously as on him who had aspired to converse with good angels?  Would they not feel an instinctive antipathy towards him?  He was convinced they would, as soon as he inwardly asked the question.

    He had just lost his thimble while he was thinking thus; and, although he hunted for it a full hour, he was not able to find it! What though this had often fallen to his share of ill luck before?  It was not, now, to be accounted for as an accident.  No; it had been spirited away: he was bewitched; he was sure he was.  It was by petty acts of mischief that the withered hags of hell usually commenced their annoyance of those whose aspirations after purity had raised their devilish hate.  His case, he feared, was too sure to prove a sorrowful one, for he knew not how to counterwork their malevolence.  What a dunce he had been to neglect that branch of occult study!  But it might not be too late to acquire even a profound knowledge of it; and so he would set about it in right earnest.

    And, poor Toby! he did set about it in earnest, insomuch that he sewed side-seams to tops and bottoms of new garments, and stitched circular patches on square rents, and squares on circular apertures in the damaged attire he undertook to repair, and mislaid his thread where he could not find it for hours,—and pricked his thumbs and fingers, half-callous though they were, with the needles,—and heated his goose till he burnt the cloth,—and fell into blunders and mishaps of most awful consequence to his professional reputation, day by day, more thickly and disastrously, until the very disasters themselves convinced him that he was approaching a climax of knowledge in the gloomy science of which he had now become so devoted a student.  The witches knew,—foul, cunning devil-dealers that they were—they knew, although he did not, as yet, ken who they were,—that he was about to become a match for them; and, therefore, they were thus bedevilling him and his cloth, and goose, and shears, and thimble, and needles, in this "heyday, hide-and-seek, burn-it-and-bother-it," sort of way.

    Toby would not "give it up," however, torment him as they might—the spiteful fiendlings!  He still read and thought, and thought and read, and compared the description of feature which his books contained with the physiognomies of all who visited his abode, until he entertained a shrewd suspicion of who were the real and identical, though secret, practisers of all this infernal mischief.  Yet, as some of these had been, for years, his best and kindest employers, the witch-seer found it go sorely against the grain of his affectionate nature to provoke a quarrel with them.  Often did he chide his spirit when he had permitted any of these suspicious visitors to depart with heartfelt thanks for the kindly present of a cake, or a new cheese, or a dish of butter, or half-score of eggs, with which they had coupled their order for the repair of a coat, or nether habit; and as often did he resolve to prepare himself against their next visit for a red-hot quarrel.

    Months elapsed before the amiable-hearted visionary could "screw his courage to the sticking—place," so as to enable him to "fall out" with his friends and benefactors; not that he feared their witchery, or the heavier harm it might bring upon him, when he had defied it.  He soon lost all dread of that kind.  It was his true-heartedness—his genuine gratitude—that precious quality which a rogue never feels, though he talks the most loudly about it, but which honest and noble natures cannot stifle, even when warm friends have become persecuting foes,—it was that superlative virtue which struggled to keep its citadel in gentle Toby's heart's core, and the contest with which was so troublous to him.  Happily for the poor mistaken philosopher, his loving-heartedness had rendered him so dear to all who knew hint, that none would believe he was in his right mind when he suddenly became so discourteous and angry-tempered.

     "Pr'ythee, Goody, what think'st ta?" said Dolly Dustit, the little hard-working flax-woman, to Peggy, the staid housekeeper at Farmer Robinson's,—"is neighbour Toby growing queerish in his heed, wi' so much book-larning,—or, what the plague can he the matter wi' him?  I asked him to tell me what yerbs I should get to mak' a green plaister for our Jack's sore scaup, and he grinned like a fummard, and tell'd ma to gooa to the divvil, and as th' oud lad was a friend o' mine he would mak' ma my plaisters, with a witness! Doesn't ta think he's gone stranny?"

    "For sartain there's summat the matter wi' his wits, from what our maister was saying aboot him this morning," answered Peggy; "but who can wonder at it, Dolly?  I wonder his knowledge-box hasn't gone wrong-side up'ards many a year since!"

    "And Maister Robinson has had some foul speech from him, has he, then, Peggy?" asked the little flax-woman, curious to learn more of Toby's vagaries.

    "Sich foul speech as maks one queer to mention it," replied Peggy, though she evidently wanted to unburthen herself of it to her gossip, and told the shuddering news in the next breath:—"he tell'd th' farmer that his breeches smelled o' brimstone, and he wouldn't put a stitch in'em to please ayther him, or the divvil his maister!"

    "The Lord ha' marcy on us, Peggy!" ejaculated the honest: little flax-woman, "it's a sore thing to think on; but poor Toby's brain's addled at last, I'm varry sewer.  He's as harmless as a lamb when he's reight: one nivver heeard a foul word come out of his mouth.  Fin varry sorry for him, Peggy;"—and so saying, Dolly Dustit sped on to her daily work in the flax field, more deeply grieved at what she believed to be poor Toby's affliction, than at his repulsive treatment of her application for his medical advice.

    Such conferences of inquiry, wonder and regret began to arise daily in the ancient little town of Haxey, as Toby advanced further into the spirit and essence of witch-knowing; but the erring philosopher, at length, set the whole village into uproar by telling no less beloved a personage than Dame Deborah Thrumpkinson herself that he believed she was a witch,—nay, the queen and ring leader of all the witches in the Isle of Axholme,—and, to complete his madness, Toby actually strove to eject the venerable old woman from his cottage!  Fortunately, his corporal weakness prevented him from effecting the rudeness which he thus attempted; and the hearty old dame, though pitying, rather than censuring his folly, felt disposed to try the effect of a somewhat vigorous reproof of it.  Seizing the lean, attenuated student by the collar, she laid him, with one sinewy lift, fairly on his back, breathless and fear-stricken, upon the shop-board.

    "'Od rabbet thee, and thy fizzlegig foolery!" she exclaimed, setting her teeth together, as she was wont when moved more strongly than usual, "what maggots hast thou got into thy stargazing noddle, now?  A witch, indeed!  Who will take thee to be a wizard for saying so, thou dreaming old owl?  Marry, come up!  I say a witch, too!"—and then she shook poor Toby till his teeth chattered, and he would fain have uttered a loud alarm, but durst not speak for the life of him.

    The dame left him to recover his courage, and laughed heartily, in spite of some slight feeling of vexation, as she told the story to her customers during the day.  A few hours served to bring a crowd round the tailor's dwelling, though none would enter it; and, till night-fall, Toby's ears were assailed with epithets which shook his nerves till he wished himself a thousand miles off, as he afterwards said to Joe.  During the evening, the elder and more influential members of the little population of Haxey went from house to house expressing their deep regret for Toby Lackpenny's lunacy,—for they decided that he was lunatic,—and conjuringly besought the younger and more frivolous people to desist from persecution of one who had always been so good and kind-hearted a neighbour, and who was now under a visitation of Providence that rendered him an object of commiseration rather than ridicule. And so the victim of imagination was delivered from the storm of persecution which he had foreboded would be renewed on the succeeding day.

    Desirous, on her part, of making Toby feel the value of her neighbourship, Dame Deborah never crossed his threshold on that day.  Toby was thus left a solitary; and yet his mental disease had not yet reached a stage that would render solitude curative.  On the contrary, it permitted his prurient imagination to become more mischievous in its influence.

    A neat little dove-cote was a conspicuous rural adornment to the ancient gable of Dame Deborah's dwelling; and its cooing inhabitants were familiarly acquainted with the tailor's threshold, and even with his cottage-floor,—whither they were often attracted by the crumbs Toby spread upon it, when his favourite tabby had strayed forth from the cot, and so could give no alarm to these feathered visitants.  Toby had been reading a full description, during that solitary morning, in. one of his witchery-books, of the way in which the most powerful of all charms might be prepared for subjugating a witch or a wizard; and the entrance of one of Dame Deborah's pigeons, into his cottage, seemed to give him the opportunity he coveted of testing the efficacy of the prescribed charm.  He wilily closed his door, and, after a brief struggle, captured the bird,—which he forthwith secured, by shutting it up in the oaken corner cupboard, which served him for wardrobe, larder and coal cellar.

    The day wore on, and the philosopher, with a struggle against his misgivings that whispered "cruelty and barbarity," reckoned mightily on the triumph his newly-acquired knowledge was to give him over the powers of darkness as soon as night arrived, and the murky hour of twelve approached.  He sharpened a knife till the edge was most deadly keen; he made up a good fire; he collected at least one hundred pins from the patches on his shop-board and in his drawers; he prepared the string by which the dove's heart was to be hung to roast; and he drove in the nail to which the string was to be tied.

    And now the black midnight hour was near, and, trembling with agitation that might almost be called horror, Toby Lackpenny took the poor fluttering pigeon out of its hiding-place, and took the fierce knife into his hand to be ready to dash into its breast as soon as the church-clock struck the first stroke of twelve.  Need he had for self-possession and preparedness of mind and act, in order to complete his necromantic feat like a true adept,—for, although he was not to wound the bird till he heard the first stroke of twelve, yet he must have its heart out, alive, and have it stuck full of pins, and placed down at the fire to roast,—and all before the church-clock had told the last stroke of twelve!

    "Pshaw!—nonsense—what a chicken-hearted fool I am!" said poor Toby to himself, as he stood trying to confine the bird's wings with one hand, and holding his sharp knife in the other: "let me think of the victory I shall obtain over these agents of the Evil One,—and not give way in this childish manner!"

    But Toby did give way, and could not help it; as he said to Joe when he afterwards described this strange temptation to his beloved young friend.  The faster the moments flew, and the more nearly the magical moment approached, the more Toby trembled and the more loudly his heart beat against his ribs, and the more terrifically his conscience menaced his peace, till—as the last half-minute was elapsing—he threw down the knife, and, releasing the pigeon from his grasp, declared aloud, though out of the hearing of every human being, that he neither could nor would hurt the poor harmless dove, even if all the witches on earth, and all the fiends they dealt with in the other place, should, thenceforth, have power to torment him every minute of his remaining life.

    There was an end of Toby's grand achievement of power over all the witches and wizards with whom he believed the Isle of Axholme to be infested!  The hour had passed over, and it was too late—perhaps, for ever—for him to perform the all-potent immolation,—since the sacrifice of the same pigeon would be of no efficacy, after it had been prepared, and yet remained unslaughtered.  His better nature felt satisfaction at the thought of the pigeon being still alive, though his superstitious ambition led him to experience a deep shade of regret that he had not had hardihood of spirit sufficient to enable him to grasp the grand ideal-prize which was so nearly within his reach.  Regrets were useless, however, he reflected; and so he quenched his blazing fire, and lay down to rest.

    In the morning, a new temptation awaited the fanatical witch-finder.  Forgetting that Tabby could easily pounce upon the pigeon while left on the cottage-floor, though she could not get at it in the cupboard,—Toby had gone to bed without concerning himself about the safety of the bird, being so much absorbed with the feeling of satisfaction that he had spared its life.  No sooner had her master fallen asleep, however, and the bird placed its bill under its wing for taking rest, than Tabby slily seized her prize and butchered it for a secret banquet.  Her bloody mouth and glistening eyes, together with the scattered feathers, proclaimed her deed, most unmistakably, as soon almost as Toby had opened his eyes and looked around his humble dwelling.

    A new conviction sprang into his capricious brain: Tabby was a witch, self-transfigured into a cat!  There could be no doubt of it—not the shadow of a doubt.  How strange that he had not marked her particular habits before!—and yet, it was a fact, now he came to think of it,—that she purred and squinted just like the transfigured cat-witches he had lately read of in his profound, mystical hook.  As for the pigeon, she hated it of course, knowing the purpose for which it had been brought thither.  It was as clear as the sun at noon,—though all cats liked pigeon-flesh if they could get it, that Tabby devoured this pigeon because she was a witch, and it had been secreted as a forthcoming sacrificial charm for overthrowing witch-power.

    What, then, was the discerning Lackpenny to do, under this astounding discovery?  He resolved to put an end to Tabby's life, by the peculiar and effectual mode in which alone a catwitch could be destroyed: she must be hung up by the heels over his cottage-door to die a prolonged but irredeemable death!  Toby shuddered; but he was convinced it was the only righteous and wise way to be taken,—and so he set about carrying it into effect.  Tabby inflicted some vengeful wounds on her old master while he was in course of tying the cord around her hind feet, and then hoisting her up over the door;—but Toby fulfilled his office of executioner—thrust on him by fate and duty, he believed—very stoutly this time—in spite of the aversion he felt at taking away the life of a dumb creature which had sung "three-thrum" on his hearth so often, and borne him company through so many days of poverty, although days of content.  He hung up his cat; but how was he to stop her cries ?

    A crowd again gathered round his house, and demanded that he should release his cat.  But Toby was more resolute that he would not the more they insisted on it.  Dame Deborah, at length, stepped from her dwelling, and, cutting the poor animal loose, broke Toby's counter-enchantment at a stroke.  Then throwing open the tailor's door, and fixing her eyes upon him very threateningly, she told him she would certainly help to hang him by the heels, if ever he attempted again to treat his poor harmless cat in so barbarous a manner.

    Toby spake not one word.  His recollection of the fearful shake the aged dame had lately given him rendered him apprehensive that she might renew it, and so he kept prudent silence.

    The crowd gradually departed, and left the baffled philosopher-visionary, once more, to solitary reflection—but it was now hungry reflection,—and proved to be most effectual in dispelling his wild fancies.  Shame under the keen reproofs of his neighbours, and failure of his cupboard, contributed to weary him of his witch notions,—so that on the following morning he was fain to receive a little present from Dame Deborah, with thanks for her kindness.

    Gradually, he became so entirely ashamed of his recent eccentricities that he made earnest apologies to all whom he had treated with rudeness,—and all were so ready to forgive, and so happy to see him restored to a neighbourly temper, that Toby found it easy to recover his former ease of mind and habitual good humour.

    The longer Toby lived the less likely was it for one so ardently imaginative by constitution to sink into the mere matter-of-fact quietude of thought that characterized the majority of his neighbours.  On the contrary, as he grew older, his brain became more and more prolific of imaginations; but, happily, they were increasingly of a more pleasing nature as he increased in years.  In spite of all his life-long dreams and fancies, and in spite of straitness in his means of living, Toby was a happy old man; for, with all the startling activity of his imagination, Toby had never corrupted his bodily vigour by a single act of intemperance.  When Joe returned to bury his aged foster-mother, Toby walked, by the help of two sticks, to the grave-side, declaring that he saw two lovely angels walking before the coffin all the way from the dame's door, and he knew they would come for him next.  Whether the yearning of his desire and imagination, or the great effort he made to attend the funeral, most assisted to hasten his end, cannot be said;—but he died the very next day,—with a heaven of smiles on his aged face,—and with the words "Heaven" and "angels" on his tongue.

_______________________________

 
CRINKUM CRANKUM:
THE MAN WHO WENT STRAIGHT FORWARD
DOWN CROOKED LANE.
_________

CRINKUM CRANKUM always had a will of his own: I mean, his grandmother and the elderly ladies of the family used to say so.  But whether they really knew anything about it, or only spoke from guess, I will not undertake to say.  I am the more diffident about making any assertion on this point, from the fact that Master Solomon Soundcap, the village apothecary, who knew every argument in Jonathan Edwards by heart, always maintained that the question of the will was one with which his neighbour Crinkum ought never to be mixed up.  Master Solomon's notion was, that the whole family of the Crankums had invariably been governed by whim rather than will.

    "The will, sir," Master Solomon would say, suspending any compounding operation in which he happened to be busied, and laying his forefingers across, while he looked as potently logical as any pleader at Equity:—"the will, sir, is too high a faculty to be confounded with the mere fits and starts of a man who never looks before he leaps; it is determined by motive,—and is, therefore, a faculty related to the human reason or understanding, not to the passions.   A man who is governed by impulse, or rather, who is under no government at all, ought to be regarded as a mere compages of gross animal matter, through which runs the smallest modicum of nervous fluid, just to render it sensitive.  And such, sir, are the constituents of all the Crankums: ergo, you may safely assert that my neighbour has whims, but not a will of his own."

    Now, I do not say that Master Solomon Soundcap convinced me that he understood this profound subject any more than did Crinkum Crankum's grandmother.  Nevertheless, his mode of argument, with his reputation as a reasoner, were so imposing to one but little acquainted with the mazes of metaphysics, that, as I have observed before, I am somewhat diffident of placing my own immature opinion in contradiction to his.

    But Crinkum Crankum himself had no doubt that his grandmother was right.  He never deigned to parley with Master Solomon whenever the argumentative apothecary proposed to introduce his theory, but would dash his hand in the air, and, with a haughty toss of his head, exclaim, "Pooh! pish! pshaw! crotchets and quavers! leave your round-about jargon, and come to the point at once!  I always go straight forward!"  "So do you, down Crooked Lane," the subtle compounder of logic and medicine would reply.  And then Crinkurn Crankum, with a throat swelling and crimsoning with ill-temper, would rush out hastily from the apothecary's shop, as if he were fearful his passion would explode into some less civil phrases than Good-night, or, Good-morning.

    And why should Solomon Soundcap, or any other of Crinkum Crankum's neighbours, have troubled themselves to thwart him in his family notion that he always had a will of his own?  What harm could it do to him?—good-natured people may ask.  Was it not better that he should entertain such a notion, than that he should be perpetually palliating a fault by saying he could not help it, as so many weak people do?  Was not this obstinacy in the belief that he had a will of his own infinitely preferable to the vulgar custom of pleading that he was a mere "creature of circumstance," and thereby slipping out of the noose of moral culpableness at every misdemeanour?

    Indeed, these questions seem sensible enough at first sight; for a man who obstinately believes that he has a will of his own places himself at once, one would think, in a position of responsibility to society, by acknowledging his capacity to keep, as well as to break, its rules.

    Unluckily, the other side of this case of casuistry is unfavourable to the lenient view taken by good-natured people.  Crinkum Crankum, like his forefathers, gloried in his belief of having a will of his own, from a self-complacent sense of privilege that it gave him, and thereby dislodged from his own brain every germ of a thought about responsibility, as quickly as it was sown in that torrid soil.  In brief: by virtue of having a will of his own, he not only argued that he could, but that he would do as he liked, and so became excessively termagant in his disposition to subdue the wills of others.

    Very strange to say, Master Solomon Soundcap was the only apologist to be found in the parish, whenever his neighbours uttered their indignant complaints against Crinkum Crankum's displays of despotic humour.

    "You mistake the matter, neighbours," it was his wont to argue; "I do not care how energetic a man may be in enforcing his views, if they tend to usefulness or edification.  If one wise man can succeed in leading fools to their own interest, and to the aid or augmentation of the general good, I have no objection to his taking the lead, and compelling others to follow him.  But, when a man to-day is found proclaiming every one an ass who thinks adverse from himself, and, next week, or next year, having espoused that same asinine way of thinking, brays out an anathema on all who have given it up, what is to be said for his consistency?  Neighbours, I would pound my fingers, instead of this lump of rhubarb, rather than take away my townsman's reputation; but, though I cannot join you in complaining of any man, simply because he is wilful, I must complain because he is wilfully whimsical."

    Thus Master Solomon, who, the reader will have discerned, was only half a Conservative,—apologised for his neighbour's faults, in the customary mode of neighbourly apologists,—that is, by furnishing the complainant with new grounds of dislike, in lieu of convincing him that his own allegements were ungrounded.

    Crinkum Crankum, however, heeded neither open complainants nor pseudo-apologists: his life-long habit was to assert every new doctrine which he professed,—and he professed nearly every doctrine in the course of his life,—with equal vehemence and equal dogmatism.  He was a great advocate for "Nature," in early life, and would challenge the clergyman of the parish, whenever he met him, to what he called "free discussion"; yet it was only free so far as it afforded Crinkum Crankum a renewed opportunity for abusing the clergyman to his face, and telling him that "some people might be cozened by fables, while others might be intimidated into a tacit profession of what their understandings rejected, lest they should lose caste; but there was one man in the parish, the clergyman must know, who was neither to be deluded nor frightened, for he had a will of his own, and went straight forward."

    The mild and inoffensive curate—the vicar being a non-resident—was often hurt by these blustering attacks of Crinkum Crankum, for his meek and sincere nature rendered him incapable of cozening or intimidation.  His gratification, therefore, was mingled with considerable alloy when Crinkum Crankum, in the latter part of his life, became an earnest devotee and punctual attendant on the church-service,—wedging the quarto Prayer-book under his left arm, after the fashion of his great-grandfather, and proceeding to his pew with solemn visage,—but never acknowledging the impropriety and illiberality of his former course.  The curate would, conscientiously, but gently, touch on this topic sometimes; and especially when Crinkum Crankum was in a flourish of attachment to the Established religion.  A reply he gave to one of Crinkum's most glaring displays of effrontery so deeply chagrined the new Churchman that he turned his religious coat once more, and became a "sectarian," to use his own language.

    "The fact is, I have a will of my own, sir," said Crinkum, "and therefore I am not to be wheedled by these sectarians."

    "And I rejoice that your will has made so profitable a decision as that of returning to the bosom of the Church," observed the quiet curate;—"I humbly trust you acquit me of some motives—shall I say, somewhat ungently attributed to me, a few years ago?" and the clergyman stopped, and smiled, with an expression of the greatest kindness.

    "O! as to all that, sir," answered Crinkum Crankum, with his customary toss of the head, "I always act independently; I always tell a man what I think; I never mince the matter; an short, sir, I have a will of my own, and I always go straight forward."

    "Alas!  I fear it is down Crooked Lane, as our good neighbour Soundcap says," enunciated the curate, almost involuntarily, and through the real welling-up of his pity for the man's irreclaimable egotism.

    "Good morning, reverend sir!" returned Crinkum Crankum, with an ironical emphasis on the syllables of courtesy; and turned his back on the clergyman, to whom he never spoke afterwards.

    In his youth, Crinkum was a fiery Democrat; and, though some of his neighbours uncharitably suspected it was to spite his wealthier cousin, who was a Tory, Crinkum himself always maintained that it was, simply and purely, because "he had a will of his own, and always went straight forward."  Not at all to the surprise of Master Solomon Soundcap, though it might have surprised some of the shallower students in human nature that inhabited the village, Crinkum, one day in his middle age, set upon the metaphysical apothecary very violently for his very moderate, his mere "milk and water" sentiments, as a Conservative—sentiments which Master Solomon had modestly avowed from early manhood, while Crinkum had veered completely round to what he himself termed "genuine" Toryism.

    "I have no patience with such neutral nonsense," burst forth the indignant Crinkum, when he had listened to half a sentence of Master Solomon's considerate speech;—"I like to hear a man say what he means, without so much of parenthesis and qualifying of his meaning——"

    "But my good friend," interrupted Master Solomon, though he was by no means commonly guilty of that discourteous practice, "if you like to hear a man say what he means, you would not like a man to play the hypocrite by saying more than he means, would you?"

    "Why, as to that, sir," was Crinkum's stereotyped preface to an answer, "I really do not see the necessity of so much wordiness; if a man's mind be made up,—and he won't be long about it, if he possesses one,—he will soon express it.  People that ask others what they shall think, for certain reasons, sir!"—and here the speaker gave a significant glance at the apothecary's labelled jars and large-bellied bottles; "such people, sir, must take time to say their say.  But, let me tell you, sir, I have a will of my own, and always go straight forward."

    "Down Crooked Lane!" tittered Master Solomon; whereat Crinkum Crankum turned his heel in high dudgeon, and with the usual resemblance to a turkey-cock about his throat, shunning the apothecary's threshold, as a "stumbling-block of offence," for many weeks after.

    On many subjects of jurisprudence, as well as in religion and politics, Crinkum Crankum professed "broad and enlightened" views in his youth.  For instance, he was enthusiastic in his praise of humane treatment of criminals, and forsook the evening parlour at the "Hop-pole," for five nights, because the landlord,—a man most unusually slender of abdomen,—had no "bowels of mercy," as Crinkum said, and had bluntly declared his satisfaction that a notorious thief and burglar was hanged.  Yet, in advanced manhood, being on his journey home from the neighbouring market, and having entered into conversation with a Quaker who resided in his village, Crinkum's change of sentiment, but fixity of dogmatism and intolerance, displayed themselves in the following brief conversation:—

    "Is it true that you are opposed to the hanging of murderers, Obadiah Terseverse?   No! you can't be, I'm sure!"

    "Yea, but I can, and I am," replied Obadiah. "Then you're not a Christian——"

    "How so, friend Crinkum?  Slander not thy neighbour, who never did thee any harm," interposed the honest religionist.

    "Pshaw! none of your cant," was Crinkum Crankum's termagant answer.  "How can you be a Christian if you deny the precept, 'Whosoever sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed'?"

    "Friend, bethink thee!" answered the Quaker, with great mildness; "that was written and spoken before a Christian was heard of "

    "You infidel hypocrite!" burst forth Crinkum; "and so that's the way you shuffle out of a plain commandment!   Why, you know as well as I do that we should none of us be safe in our beds if they did not hang every murderer"

    "Is that the way thou interpretest another plain commandment, 'Thou shalt not kill'?" quietly interposed the Quaker, once more.

    "O! as for that, sir," said Crinkum, somewhat hesitatingly, and a little puzzled, "I shall not enter on any round-about way to the root of the matter.  Without spending five words about it, I tell you, sir, the point is so clear that no man can be sincere who talks as you do: it is but mawkish sentimentalism; mere whining stuff to win a name for humanity.  Many people are vastly covetous of a reputation for tenderness of feeling, and——'

    "And dost thou remember thy five nights' absence from the 'Hop-pole'?" asked the Quaker, with provoking gravity.

    "Zounds!" exclaimed Crinkum, in a towering passion, "do you think I shall ask you for a rule of conduct?  I have a will of my own, sir, and I always go straight forward."

    "Verily, so thou dost," retorted, the Quaker, while he restrained his laughter with difficulty; "but, as neighbour Solomon saith, it is down Crooked Lane!"

    Crinkum Crankum struck his horse with the spurs, after hurling an unutterable glance of ire at the Quaker, and soon got out of sound of the hearty mirth in which the latter indulged.

    I will but note another article in the list of Crinkum Crankum's countless vagaries, and then have done.  Because hard drinking was the perverse fashion when he was young, Crinkum restricted himself to "moderation," as he called it—for the word "temperance," as a monopoly of expression for self-denial in only one kind of vianding, was then unusual.  His virtuous scorn of the "mere animals" was, at that time of life, very loudly expressed.  Yet he lived to become a two-bottle man, often; and, now and then, ventured on three—professing, the next morning, in spite of sickness and tormenting head-ache, the utmost contempt for "these new-fangled creatures," the Teetotallers!  Two years before his death, he, nevertheless, fulfilled a prophecy of Master Solomon Soundcap, which astounded the village when they first heard it,—and became a Teetotaller himself.

    "I have no faith in any man who takes the Total Abstinence pledge and then breaks it," was Crinkum Crankum's charitable observation, at the expiry of one year's water-discipleship; and the next evening Crinkum Crankum "took a little wine for his stomach's sake!"  Indeed, it was on this occasion, only, in the remembrance of Master Solomon Soundcap, that Crinkum vouchsafed to give a reason for his change of practice.

    "And so you have given up the Total Abstinence principles, I learn, friend Crinkum?" said the apothecary, as he was mixing the quaking veteran of change and positivity a salutary phial of quinine and other tonics.

    "Well!" retorted Crinkum, with a frown, "and if I have?  Do you think I am such a goose as to stick by a custom when I find it injures my health?"

    "O dear, no!" exclaimed Master Solomon, fairly taken by surprise at hearing Crinkum Crankum condescend to give a common-sense reason for a change of sentiment or conduct.

    "Then don't bother me about it," continued Crinkum; "I tell you I have a will of my own, and ——"

    But Crinkum Crankum, for very shame, and in dread that he would hear Master Solomon's most unwelcome chorus to the old burthen once more repeated,—here stopped short, and asked what he had to pay for the phial of medicine.

    This was the last time he visited the apothecary, though it was not the last time the apothecary visited him.  Master Solomon was wont to say, after Crinkum's death, that the ruling passion was strong within him, even in articulo mortis; for that he appealed to him, Master Solomon the apothecary, very earnestly, as he poured out the last draught of cordial, whether he had not "always had a will of his own, and gone straight forward?"

    "How strange," said I, after some minutes' silence, when the apothecary made this relation; "how strange—that the most changeable and most inconsistent of mortals should be the most intolerant!"

    "All his weaknesses and errors were traceable to one cause," replied my venerable friend; "he had never learnt to reflect.  And, young man," added the old man, with a significant look, "the Crankums are by no means extinct; they are a numerous family."

_______________________________

 
PETER POSTLETHWAITE:
THE MAN WHO HAD "A WAY OF HIS OWN."
_________

IN the middle of the last century,—before dwellers in far off provincial places had learnt to imitate fine fashions which London imports from Paris, and when people chose their garments for capability of biding wear and tear, and not for show,—there lived in the market-place of Sticklewick-in-Craven, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, a notable fabricator of leathern inexpressibles, named Peter Postlethwaite.  Peter was no slop-seller.  There was simply one pair of the very useful and indispensable article he manufactured hung out over his shop door by way of sign, but not for sale.  Peter worked to order, and not otherwise; and in the acceptance of orders he was not resembled by any stitcher of buckskin within fifty miles of Sticklewick.

    "I have a way of my own," Peter used to say; but it would not be easy to say what his way was.  The rich were among his customers; yet, it is very certain, Peter did not prefer them.  Courtesy he invariably shewed when declining the orders of the rich; but no courtesy on their part could persuade him to oblige them against his disinclination.  And as for threatening him with displeasure, or a withdrawal of custom, nobody ever tried such methods with Peter Postlethwaite: it was known they would not avail with him.

    Squire Fulltilt, lord of the neighbouring manor, called at Peter's shop-door one morning in Spring, just as he had called two seasons before, with a very winning look.

    "Good morning, Peter," he began; "I hope you will oblige me for this next season.  I like your make and fit better than any other tailor's.  Besides your seams never burst; and, you know that's a great matter to me, for I stick at nothing,—hedge, ditch, or gate,—and am always first in at the death."

    "I know it, squire; and I honour ye for your bold riding," replied Peter, with a peculiar humour about the mouth, which the squire did not perceive; "but I cannot have the honour of serving you this season, squire."

    "You can't, Peter! why, you have not obliged me for two seasons past.  What the deuce is the reason why you refuse me this time?"

    "I should not be able to serve ye on this side Christmas, squire; and I could not think of being so unhandsome to ye as to keep ye waiting for eight months."

    "Then why, man, don't you act sensibly, like other tailors, and hire journeymen, since you have more orders than you can fulfil yourself?"

    "Ah, squire!  I'm afraid their seams would burst."

    The squire still did not perceive the droll twitch about the corners of Peter's mouth.

    "Come, come," he urged, "do try to oblige me this time.  Put somebody off."

    "Thank ye, squire; but I never do that," Peter said.

    "You don't! and why not?  Tom Lookfair will oblige me in that way any time."

    "That may be his way; but I have away of my own," Peter replied, with a shake of his head.

    The squire turned from the shop-door hastily, thrust the hook of his whip into his mouth, and walked off angrily, not giving Peter "Good day!" but murmuring, "Confound this way of his own!"

    Now, all the simple Sticklewickers had a strong regard for Peter; but neither did they understand this "way of his own."  It was a mystery they often talked over; but none of them could interpret it.  There was a current report—and it was held to be as credible as it was wonderful—that the parson of the parish had tried to comprehend Peter's "way";—that he had gone to be measured for a pair of leathern nether-habiliments himself on the very day that Squire Fulltilt had indignantly told him of Peter Postlethwaite's refusal, and again had failed to comprehend Peter's "way."

    This current report enhanced the public estimate of Peter's profundity of mind, by the words it attributed to him in his conversation with the good parson, which remarkable conversation ran thus:—

    "Good-day, Mr. Postlethwaite," began the vicar, looking through his spectacles over the half-door, as the tailor sat at work; "I want you to measure me for an article in your way, if you please."

    Peter opened the little half-door in a trice, welcoming his visitor with a polite bow, but proceeding to put questions which somewhat surprised the vicar:—

    "Highly honoured, reverend sir, by your visit, and by the offer of your patronage; but, since this is the first offer, may I ask why you make it?"

    "Why I make it!" repeated the vicar, in astonishment, staring first through his spectacles at Peter, and then over them.

    "Yes, sir; no offence, your reverence; but, why do you make me the offer of your patronage?"

    "Bless me! Mr. Postlethwaite, what a strange question: why, because I want the breeches to wear, to be sure!"

    "Did your reverence ever wear a pair made of leather before?"

    "No—never—before," answered the good parson, slowly; "but what of that?"

    "Pray, sir, may I ask if your reverence is purposing to join Squire Fulltilt's hounds the next season?"

    "No, Mr. Postlethwaite; certainly not.  I think I have something better to do—"

    "I think so too, sir, and I am glad to hear you say so," observed Peter, interrupting the parson, and immediately proceeding busily to handle the measuring-strip.  "Thank you, sir," he said, when he had taken the parson's measure; "you shall have them home by the end of next week, sir."

    "Next week," repeated the vicar, in a marked tone, and looking full at Peter in such a manner as he imagined would perplex and confound the workman in buckskin; "if you can serve me by the end of next week, how was it that you told Squire Fulltilt you could not oblige him for eight months to come?  I answered your questions: will you answer mine?"

    "Your reverence," replied Peter, "I have a way of my own."

    "Why—yes—Mr. Postlethwaite," rejoined the parson doubtfully, "so they tell me you always say; but I cannot understand your way.  Pray may I ask—"

    "Pardon me, reverend sir," interrupted Peter, with a very polite obeisance, "I honour and respect you as an excellent Protestant clergyman: I say, Protestant.  But, you know, sir, to insist on auricular confession is—Popish!"

    "I beg pardon—I beg pardon, Mr. Postlethwaite.  Good-day—good-day!" said the parson, hurrying away from Peter's shop back to the Vicarage, where he rehearsed the dialogue to his intelligent spouse three times during the evening, and was as often told that he deserved his rebuff for his busy meddling.

    "My dear, I can't forget it," said the parson, rising the third time from his arm-chair.

    "My dear, I hope you never will forget it," observed his affectionate comforter.

    "If the man had given me any civil and respectful reason for declining to answer my questions, I would not have cared; but to insinuate that I wished to put rank Popery into practice,—it was impertinent!  Upon my word, I have a good mind to go and countermand the order!"

    "I hope you will not do anything so foolish.  You should not have given him an order for an article that you will never want.  But, to go now and countermand it—why, the man would raise the laughter of the whole parish against you!"

    "I fear he would.  You are right, my dear," granted the vicar, re-seating himself in the arm-chair, with the resolution to be quiet.  "Bless me!" he exclaimed, after musing uneasily some minutes, "why, yesterday was St. Mark's Eve!"

    "And what of that?" asked the lady, in surprise at her husband's new excitement.

    "What of that!  Don't you remember that they say Postlethwaite always watches through St. Mark's Eve in the church porch?"

    "Watches in the church-porch!  For what?"

    "For the—the—visions, you know, my dear; visions of all the people in the parish who are to be brought into the church this year as corpses, and of all the couples who are to enter it to be married."

    The lady burst into a fit of laughter.  "So, I suppose you have jumped to the conclusion that Peter Postlethwaite has had a vision of Squire Fulltilt's corpse in the church-porch, and has therefore refused to oblige him!" said the lady.

    The good parson, after a round of visits the next morning among his parishioners, returned to the Vicarage in a very determined state of mind.

    "My dear, I must and will," he commenced, the moment he entered the parlour; "I must and will go again to this strange man, Postlethwaite, and either obtain a satisfactory answer from him about this 'way of his own,' as he calls it, or countermand my order, and have no more to do with him.  The whole parish is in a buzz to-day with the reports of the visions he has had in the church-porch on the night before last—St. Mark's Eve, you know.  And if he be an impudent impostor playing on the weakness of his neighbours,—which I shrewdly suspect to be the fact,—he deserves to be punished."

    "Then, since you 'must and will' go, as you say," said the lady, quietly, "let me beg that you will not commit yourself by letting the man suspect that you believe him guilty of the folly people attribute to him."

    "Well, my dear, I will be discreet," promised the earnest vicar; "but I must and will have the truth out of him."

    At the end of the street leading from the Parsonage the vicar slackened the hasty pace with which he had set out,—for there was Peter Postlethwaite, talking to a poor man in very shabby nether garments.

    "You must patch 'em for me once more," the parson heard the poor man say.

    "I can't.  They'll not 'bide patching again," was the sharp answer that Peter returned.  "Come and be measured for a new pair," he added.

    "I can't afford a new pair," objected the poor man.

    "Nonsense! come and be measured, I say," pronounced Peter, decisively,—and off he went.

    The parson marked that the poor man looked after Peter with a smile.  The next moment the man touched his hat to the vicar, who had half a wish to ask him a few questions about Peter, but suppressed it,—for another man was speaking to the tailor.  The vicar could not hear this man's first words; but saw Peter give a very formidable shake of the head.  Again the man seemed to entreat Peter—

    "No," Peter answered loudly, "and—beware!"

    "Mercy on me!  Ha' ye seen my shadow in the porch?" gasped the man, looking affrighted.

    Peter left the man answerless, stalked away, and regained his shop.  A minute after, the vicar stood at the half-door, and looked over it.

    "Mr. Postlethwaite, can I have a word with you?" said the vicar.

    "Twenty, sir, if you please," answered Peter; and quickly opened the door, to let in the good parson.

    "I have an important question to ask you; and, though I do not come to play the Popish inquisitor with you, I conjure you to answer it, as you value the health of your soul—your welfare here and hereafter!"

    The vicar pronounced these words so solemnly that Peter looked very serious, and then requested his reverend visitor, very respectfully, to walk into an inner apartment, that they might talk without interruption.  Once seated in a room, which though small, was better stored with books than any room in Sticklewick, except his own study, the parson felt extreme difficulty in commencing the "case of conscience."  Lo, and behold! there were the multitudinous volumes of Archbishop Tillotson on Peter's shelves; and there were golden-tongued Jeremy Taylor, and majestic Hooker, and the witty and instructive Bishop Hall, and many other of the great divines of the Church of England.  Peter must be not only a true Churchman, but a very sensible man, the parson reflected, if minds like these were his companions.  The parson was quite taken aback.  He had not entertained the least shadow of an imagination that Peter was a person of really intellectual habits, although it now rushed upon his recollection that he had often thought Peter's manner, with all its eccentricity, marked the man of thought.

    Peter sat and waited respectfully; but the vicar's eyes still wandered over the book-shelves.  But he must say something, and so he made an effort; and, after a few prefatory words commending the sound teaching of some of the great authors on the shelves, he struck a severe blow, by way of inuendo, at the heinous criminality of those who, despite their enlightenment from such teaching, live immoral lives, and resort to unhallowed practices.  Postlethwaite assented most respectfully to the truth of the vicar's observations; but sat with provoking unconsciousness that they were meant for any party there present.  The good parson now held himself conscientiously bound to be plain, and to strike home.  What were the exact words he used the vicar could never remember in after years: he could only certify that he poured forth a volume of objurgations about Peter's "way of his own"; and the watching in the church-porch on St. Mark's Eve; and the refusal of Squire Fulltilt; and of the ragged poor man in the street, with a "beware!" and the favour shewn by Peter to the other poor man; and a score of scandalous reports about Peter's visions;—and that Peter sat and received the torrent with such a look of amused wonder as was indescribable.  The good parson's memory as to what Peter replied was more perfect.  Peter set out with a question:—

    "Pray, sir," he asked, "has any one told you that I said I had watched in the church-porch at St. Mark's Eve, either in this year, or any former year?"

    "No, Mr. Postlethwaite; not exactly that, though everybody in Sticklewick talks of it as an undoubted fact.  But you seem a very different man from what I took you to be by report, and I feel that I ought to beg your pardon for having credited, even in the smallest degree, a report so prejudicial to you, as well as so absurd."

    "You shall not ask my pardon, reverend sir," said Peter, with a kindly dignity which surprised the vicar:—"I know that impressions are often made on our minds by the gossiping industry with which scores around us assert their convictions.  I reverence your office, and I love you for your personal benevolence; and, in order to relieve you of any remaining uneasy impression, I will now endeavour to satisfy you as to this 'way of my own.'"

    "Thank you, Mr. Postlethwaite, thank you!" said the vicar, eagerly; for, notwithstanding that his estimate of Peter's true character was rapidly changing, he felt very fidgetty for the full explanation.

    "Very early in life, sir, I became a diligent reader," commenced Peter: "this habit, together with a disappointment of a tender nature,—which, I trust, you will excuse me if I do not further allude to,—gave me a dislike to the company of inns and such like places of resort; and, perhaps I ought to say, to the ordinary conversation of men—though I really am not soured against my species—I only dislike the selfishness and other vices by which I see so many are enthralled and degraded; and I dislike vice as much in the high as in the low.  I consider that the rich, who are only the permitted stewards of wealth, under Providence, are vicious when they waste their riches on low and useless pleasures such as keeping packs of hounds, and pursuing fox-hunting as the chief end of existence.  Being a free Englishman who possesses the skill to earn a good livelihood, I exercise what I conceive to be my right to refuse to work for Squire Fulltilt."

    "It is your right, certainly, if you choose to exercise it, Mr. Postlethwaite," interjected the parson; "but don't you think you are carrying your right to an extreme?"

    "It may be so, reverend sir," yielded Peter: "but it is my 'way'; and I am telling you what my 'way' really is, at the risk of your deeming it whimsical.  Take no offence, sir, when I say that I should still more resolutely have refused to take your offer if you had confessed that you intended to violate the excellent pastoral character which has distinguished you ever since you became our vicar, by joining the squire's hunting parties."

    "There I think you would have done right," avowed the good parson.  "I do not like to speak uncharitably of any of my brethren of the cloth, being too sensible that I have my own imperfections; but I regard the dissipated habits of some clergymen that I could name as very condemnable."

    "I am happy that your reverence approves my 'way ' in some degree," Peter went on; "and now let me briefly explain my conduct towards the two labouring men I met in the street.  The poor man to whom I spoke encouragingly has a very large family, and, of course, it holds him down in the world.  Yet he is honest, sober and industrious.  I can afford to trust him, for the new article he so much needs.  And even if some unforeseen calamity should overtake him, and I should never get the money—why, I have neither chick nor child to provide for—the loss would not ruin me; and I should have pleasure in reflecting that I had benefited a deserving, poor man."

    "Mr. Postlethwaite, your 'way' is very creditable to you," burst in the sensitive clergyman.

    "The other poor man is an habitual drunkard," continued Peter, without seeming to hear the vicar; "he earns more than the sober poor man, but he wastes nearly all he gets.  Now, I hold that I am not bound to work for the encouragement of drunkenness, any more than I am for supplying the demands of people who keep up packs of useless hounds.  I have trusted that drunken man twice, and he has been three years in my debt.  I have reasoned with him, and rebuked him, for his vices; but he does not change.  To-day, I finally denied him; and I told him that, if he did not reform, he would soon be laid in the churchyard beside his father, who drank himself to death; and the last word I said to him, as you heard, sir, was 'beware!"'

    "Just so: and then he made that peculiar observation."

    "Such peculiar observations he and others have often made, your reverence," resumed Peter, anxious to come to an end; "and I know that the report is circulated, from year to year, that I watch in the church-porch at St. Mark's Eve.  How such a notion ever arose I cannot tell.  Perhaps it may first have arisen from people's knowledge that I am fond of books, and am thus unlike my plain neighbours; and that I am often seen crossing the churchyard at unusual hours, early and late, my solitary walks for thinking lying in that direction.  Students and solitaries, your reverence knows, have in nearly all ages and countries been accused of 'unhallowed practices.''

    "I ought to have had more sense than to accuse you of them, Mr. Postlethwaite," confessed the vicar, catching the meaning of the droll twitch about Peter's mouth; "but I cannot forbear to ask you one more question since you have known for so long a time that this absurd report was in circulation respecting you, why did you not deny its truth—why did you not do all in your power to banish such superstitious notions from among the people?"

    "Perhaps I am blameable," acknowledged Peter, "in having taken a little sly pleasure in letting folks talk such nonsense, and laughing at them in my sleeve.  The cynical philosophy is not the most humane, I own.  But,"—and the tailor stopped, and looked with a gentle smile at the parson, lest the edge of the reminder he was about to utter should be felt too keenly, "but, you know, sir, my calling is to make nether-garments in buckskin: it is yours to correct men's hearts and heads.  To whom, then, does it belong so strictly as to yourself in this parish to do all in your power to banish superstitious notions from among the people?"

    "My good friend," replied the honest parson, rising and taking Peter's hand, "you give me the rebuke I most justly deserve.  I will endeavour to perform that part—that important part of my duty, for the future.  I thank you for having so patiently borne with me, and explained this 'way of your own.'  And whenever any of my parishioners speak of your 'way' again in my hearing, I shall tell them that I wish every man's 'way' was as good as Peter Postlethwaite's."

_______________________________

 
MISS DINAH AND HER LOVERS:
A STORY OF OLD-FASHIONED COURTSHIP.
_________

HOW to make love successfully is a secret worth knowing, if anybody could infallibly convey it.  But the most experienced wooers will tell you that it is an art which cannot be learnt; or, rather, that he will be most successful who can conscientiously aver to his mistress, "Madam, I swear I use no art at all."  A sincere avowal of passionate attachment can scarcely fail to captivate a very young beauty, disposed as she is almost sure to be to the romantic; will make a more mature woman pause before she pronounces a denial, and will then compel her to convey it tenderly; while it will be treated with "consideration," even by the fair one of a certain age, unless her own repeated disappointments have turned her into a "Tartar."

    The sex are far quicker to discover a sordid purpose in a wooer than men usually give them credit for.  And if a man have a pecuniary interest in view while suing for a woman's affections, he had better acknowledge it, and unaffectedly offer to her notice some equivalent advantage.  He will thereby save himself from the mortification of being detected and mocked for his false pretensions, at any rate.  A story of a rustic courtship of over seventy years ago will show that shrewdness was an attribute of even an unschooled woman, at that date.

    When old Clement Lovegroat died, his daughter Dinah inherited his goods and chattels, and succeeded to his business of grocer and petty general-dealer, in the small market-town of Lowchester.  What amount of money old Clem the shopkeeper—so he was familiarly called—left behind him, people did not know; but there was a general belief that, whether it were little or much, he would have liked to take it quietly away with him, if he had had his own will, and could have made any use of it in the other world.  Yet, if people did not know how much money Dinah's father was worth when he died, they made many guesses.  Thus ran the gossip about him, in the long room of the Rose Inn, one evening, within a month after Clement's funeral:—

    "Depend upon it, neighbours, Clem had well feathered his nest," said the landlord, "for money was all that he seemed to live for.  I don't think he drank half-a-dozen glasses of ale, or other liquor, in this house since I have been in it; and I have been tenant and landlord of the 'Rose' two and forty year, come next Michaelmas, to the best of my memory."

    "The hardest man at making a bargain I ever knew," said the miller; "I gave up the thought of getting money for grinding him a sack of wheat, years ago: I saw it far better to bargain for so much toll."

    "I' faith, that was a good notion," said the smith; "but in my line, you know, I could not resort to that plan.  I never hurried myself over any job that he brought to me, if I had aught else to do; for it was as hard to get money out of old Clem as it is to wring butter from a flint, as we say."

    "Ay, he kept it when he got it," chimed in the bellman; "I never went round with the bell for him in my life, but he made me 'bate a penny o' my fee.  Dinah will be well off now he's gone.  I wish I was young again for her sake."

    There was a laugh at the old bellman's declaration about Dinah ; and yet it served to turn the conversation into a new current.

    "She will be well off, I have no doubt," observed the wheelwright: "so many years as the old man was in business, and with his saving habits, he must have left her well provided for."

    "And with the profits he had on what he sold, in the years gone by, before the Scotch dealer set up at the other end the street, and began to undersell him," hinted the landlord, "I'd venture a good wager, Clem left his daughter five hundred spade-aces."

    "Reckoning by his shrewdness in buying in, as well as selling, I should rather think you might double the guineas, and say thousand," ventured the miller, with a very knowing look.

    "I shouldn't wonder," granted the landlord; "and they say a too, that Dinah is likely to take care of it."

    "I'll uphold her she will," said the miller.

    "You may safely say that," said the smith.

    "It will never grow less in her hands," said the wright.

    "The more's the pity it is too late for me to try my luck the way of courtship again," struck in the old bellman, who "always liked to put in his verdict byway of
joke," as he said.

    There were three other personages that night, however, in the long room of the "Rose," to whom these subjects of conversation were felt to be no joke, although the three joined in the laughter which usually followed a "verdict " of the ancient bellman.

    The first of these—for we must give him that rank on account of his clerkly office—was Titus Switchem, the schoolmaster.  He held that dignity, not because he had either any native love or acquired fitness for it, but because his father had held before him.  Titus often grumbled at his lot in life, and wished he could change it.  But whither was he to turn?—he often asked himself with a sigh.  He had never been taught an kind of handicraft; his father had left him no money wherewith to try his luck at buying and selling; and how to form a new scheme for getting a livelihood, without either money or skill, he could not imagine.  True, he was yet in the prime of life and he had never despaired of his lucky star rising some day, in the shape of a well-provided-for wife.  The conversation in the "Rose" was therefore suggestive of golden hopes to Titus Switchem.

    Next of the three serious listeners, must be classed, on account of his personal substance, the fat farmer Broadcast.  He was not a dweller in Lowchester itself, but held a farm of fifty acres in the neighbourhood; and having been a widower for the irksome period of seven weeks, he had come to the "Rose" that evening with the very intent of inquiring slily after a wife who was likely to help him to a little money—which he very much needed.  The fat farmer, as may be supposed, devoured the conversation greedily.

    Scarcely, however, with such eager appetite as the lean young barber, Snubbs.  Snubbs—"Mister" Snubbs, as he always gave his name, though everybody wondered at it in plain, old-fashioned Lowchester—had very recently come from London, and taken the business of a septuagenarian barber deceased.  He was a clever shaver: that nobody could deny.  Neither was his custom less than that of his predecessor, who had been able to save a few hundred golden guineas in the course of his long life, and to leave them to a distant relative.  But the dead barber had been a great practiser of abstemiousness: the living one loved indulgence.  So far from saving, he was already pretty deeply in debt for one in his situation of life; and Snubbs had a bright vision of happy deliverance while the conversation went on relative to the well-provided-for Dinah Lovegroat.

    Peculiar thoughts not only darted through the brains of these three guests of the "Rose," simultaneously; but their thoughts led to simultaneous resolves.

    "Good night, gentlemen," said the young barber, quickly sipping up the remnant of his glass of gin and water, "I must away, and shut up shop."

    "And I must be going, for I've school-work to do for tomorrow," said the pedagogue.

    "And so must I, for it will be late before I reach home," said the farmer; and he and the schoolmaster finished their glasses of ale.

    Snubbs the barber, being sharp and London-like in his movements, was out of the inn-door first; and farmer Broadcast, owing to his bulk, was distanced by Titus Switchem.  Titus sped along the street with unusual haste, being very unlike the barber as a locomotive: indeed, he was generally classed as the slowest-going man in Lowchester.  With unwonted speed he gained the shop-door of Dinah, and was going in "right bolt," as he had vowed to himself that he would, when—behold! there stood the barber at the shop-counter, and in close conversation with the well-provided-for heiress.  Titus saw that he was unobserved, and softly stationed himself between the shop door and the little bow-window, where he could see all that passed, and was sure to hear, if the parties talked audibly.  But the vexation was, that they only whispered.  And "confound the London fellow!" thought the clerkly Titus—"there's mischief in his grimaces.  See! if he has not seized her hand; and she smirks and blushes!  Why, what can she be thinking of?  She's old enough to be his mother!"

    Another squeeze of the hand, and another! and Dinah smirked again, and tittered like a maiden in her teens—although Dinah had quitted her teens twenty years ago.  But hark!  Titus could hear them now:—but who was this stumbling up against him?  It was the fat farmer.  Titus pretended not to know the farmer; and the farmer pretended not to know Titus.  Neither spoke; and the farmer passed on.  There—now he could hear them, again!

    "In an hour then, Miss Dinah?"

    "Nay, nay—not to-night!  I'll consither on't."

    "But, my dear Miss Dinah! you most lovely creetshur!"

    "Oh, lawks! ye'll make me split mysen wi' laughing."

    "You'll break my heart!  I must have the interview to-night.  I shall not be able to close my eyes.  I declare I won't go to bed!  My loveliest love, I'll walk under your window all night."

    "Nay, nay, ye mustn't do that.  Folk will call ye a fool; and say some'at about me that would be unpleasant, belike.  Come in an hour, then; and let's hear what ye've got to say."

    Dinah uttered the last sentence with some gravity, but with no enthusiasm.  Snubbs, however, kissed her hand thrice with rapture, bowed very theatrically, and disappeared.

    "I'll not play the fool in that absurd way," thought Titus; "I'll speak to her sensibly, at any rate—and, egad! I must look sharp, for here comes the farmer again!"—and into the shop Titus moved, while the farmer took his place, and, in turn, watched and listened.

    "Good evening to ye, Miss Dinah," began the schoolmaster.

    "Good evening," responded the shrewd and staid maiden; but bit her lip while she thought, "So, so!  Titus is struck too, or he wouldn't call me 'Miss.'  I see what they are after!"

    "I—always—had a respect for you," said the schoolmaster, with hesitation.

    "'Bliged to ye!" answered Dinah, restraining a disposition to laugh, and taking up a pair of small scales with the air of intending to "put 'em to-rights."

    "I was thinking—now you are alone—left alone like—Miss Dinah, that—that a little help in keeping your accounts might—might be agreeable."

    "Oh!  I see!" replied Dinah, looking up quickly; "well, it would.  My poor father's books are all a puzzle to me—for I'm no schollard."

    "But you know I am, Dinah," said Titus, forgetting the "Miss," and suddenly seizing her hand:—"make me a happy man, Dinah!"

    Dinah laughed; but Titus kept hold of the hand, and, forgetting how he had vowed not to "play the fool," he kissed it.

    "I always respected ye," protested Titus fervently; "but I did not like to say anything to ye in your poor father's time: I was afraid he would be angry.  Let me put his books to-rights!"

    Dinah liked that part of the schoolmaster's love-making; she believed there were moneys owing to her father, and she wanted to be furnished with the accounts that she might get the money in.

    "You shall look at them to-morrow," said Dinah.

    "But, why not to-night?" asked Titus; "and besides, I've something to say to you.  Do let it be to-night!"

    "Pooh, pooh!  What can ye have to say to me, Titus?  Whatever it be ye can say it as well to-morrow."

    "No, no! to-night!" insisted Titus.

    "Well, then, let it be to-night," yielded Dinah, having just then a droll thought in her head; "and in half-an-hour."

    "Thank ye, thank ye!" exclaimed the schoolmaster, and then kissed Dinah's hand again, and darted out of her little shop in too rapturous a state to think of Farmer Broadcast.

    And now rolled in the fat farmer, resolving to play his part more soberly than the schoolmaster.

    "How d'ye?" he began very steadily; "we're wanting a few groceries at the farm.  Let me see!  It will be a longish order.  I'll try to remember it, and you can just make a memorandum of the things, and I'll pay you for'em; and send the lad for 'em to-morrow.  But it's cold here.  You've a nice fire i' th' little back-room, I see," he observed, stretching his stout-neck, and looking over the blind of the glazed inner door; "just let me go in and sit down a bit; and I can tell you what I want while I warm my toes."

    "If ye please," answered Dinah; for she had not the slightest suspicion that this was a third would-be wooer.

    "You've a prettyish little box of a back-room here," remarked the farmer, quite naturally, as he seated himself with the intent not to move in a hurry; "let me see! we shall want a quarter of a stone of ten-penny sugar.  How much will that be?  You are only lonelyish here, now your poor fayther's gone, I imagine."

    "Two and eleven-pence:—why yes, rayther," replied Dinah; "what'll be the next article?"

    "Quarter of a stone o' treacle.  Ah!" and the farmer heaved a deep sigh, "I know what it is myself now.  How much is the treacle?"

    "Fourteen-pence: that'll make four and a penny.  I see you've a black crape on your hat.  Some near relation dead lately?"

    "Yes," answered Broadcast, "my poor wife.  But you know we must be resigned"—and he took off his hat, and put it on a table behind him:—"well, we shall want a few currants and raisins for th' Christmas week.  It's a poor heart that never rejoices, you know."

    "Very true," granted Dinah: "currants you said, and raisins.  How many think ye?  Currants is a shilling a pound, and they are very fine this year; the best raisins is ten-pence."

    "Say a couple o' pound of each then."

    "That'll be three and eight-pence: seven and nine-pence altogether."

    "You're a capital reckoner.  I wish I'd a head-piece like yours at hand.  I'm quite at a loss, at home.  Will ye join me?"

    Dinah glanced sharply at the fat farmer.  He smiled.  Dinah took the poker to stir up the fire.

    "Is there any other article you'll be wanting, think ye?" she asked; and then bade the farmer "excuse her," and hastened into the shop to wait on a customer.

    "Capital!" mused Broadcast; "I'm in possession; and that's nine parts out of ten, in the law.  Capital!" and he rubbed his hands, and chuckled;—"how chop-fallen the schoolmaster will look when he comes.  I have switched out Switchem at any rate.  I must mind my P's and Q's though; for she's as sharp as a hawk.  But I'll have her consent before I leave her, or my name's not John Broadcast."

    Thus mused and thus resolved the farmer.  Meantime Dinah, having waited upon the customer, proceeded to close the shutters of her little shop, and then to close the door—going through her work somewhat leisurely; for, now she had obtained a glimpse of the farmer's real errand, she wished him to remain where he was that the plot might thicken.

    "Seven and nine-pence, I think you said," re-commenced the farmer, when Dinah re-entered the back-room.  "You must feel very lonely here by yourself, as I was saying?"

    "Why, yes; rayther lonely at times.  Seven and nine-pence: you're right.  But is there nothing else, think ye?"

    "Seven and ninepence," repeated the farmer, and counted out the money into Dinah's hand;—"and it must be very confining for you, as well as lonely."

    "Nay, I've been used to the shop from a child," answered Dinah.

    "But—you wouldn't—have any objection to—to a—freer, healthier sort of life—if—if you could—make up your mind to a—a kind companion?"

    Dinah laughed, and the farmer thought she looked so compliant that he tried to seize her hand.  But Dinah was not disposed to have it imprisoned a third time.

    "Not so fast," said she; "I couldn't make up my mind about a companion in such a hurry as some people."

    "Well—to be sure—it looks soon enough," stammered the conscience-stricken farmer: "seven weeks is only a short time to be a widower."

    "Oh, oh! " thought Dinah, "seven weeks!"

    "But—you know—there's wooing before marrying.  We needn't be wed for a few months to come; but—say you'll think kindly o' me, and of nobody else.  That's all I ask at present; and I'll call and see you, now and then, in a friendly way."

    Dinah was not disposed to offend a good customer to the shop, and began to frame h