Now it so happened, that it wanted a fortnight of the return of Jennings’ man, the brewer, whose periodical circumgyrations with the beer, round about Buttermere, gave, like the sun, life and heat to the system of its inhabitants. In this dire emergency, Postlethwaite, whose deafness was found to increase exactly in proportion to the inconvenience of the journeys required of him, was had out, and shaken well, and bawled at, preparatory to a walk over to Lorton Vale, where the brewery was situated—only six miles distant. But his trip on this occasion was about as successful as the last, for on reaching the spot, he found that the brewer, like the grocer, the farrier, and the publicans, had disappeared for London on the same pleasurable mission. The family at Hassness was thus left without tea, beer, or bread, and, consequently, reduced to the pure mountain stream for their beverage, and oaten cakes and bacon for their principal diet. Their stock of fresh meat was usually procured from Frank Hutchison, the butcher of Cockermouth, but to go or send thither, under their present circumstances, appeared to be impossible. So that Mrs. Sandboys began to have serious alarms about two or three pimples that made their appearance on Cursty’s face, lest a continued course of salt meat and oat-cake should end in the whole family being afflicted with the scurvy. She would immediately have insisted on putting them, one and all, under a severe course of treacle and brimstone, with a dash of cream of tartar in it, to “sweeten their blood;” only, luckily, there was neither treacle nor brimstone, nor cream of tartar, to be had for twenty miles, nor anybody to go for it, and then, probably, nobody at Mr. Bowerbank’s to serve it.